


I'll Be Good

by sirfeit



Series: go home, or make a home [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Confinement, Dissociation, Dreams, F/F, F/M, Fist Fights, Flashbacks, Gen, Handcuffs, Hurt/Comfort, Incorrect Mythology, Interrogation, M/M, Original Character(s), Panic Attacks, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Tattoos, Tea, Torture, Trigedasleng, Undercover, Undercover Missions, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 28,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6115399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirfeit/pseuds/sirfeit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parallel to season 3 but canon-divergent after 3x06, Murphy as the central character. Political intrigue! Spies! Meaningful tattoos! Incredibly incorrect mythology! Adventures! Wow. </p><p>---</p><p>He’s back in the dungeon underneath Polis. Lexa and Clarke are both there: Lexa to hurt him and Clarke to make sure he lives through it. He needs to look broken enough that Arkadia won’t suspect anything. He’s already practicing what he’ll spit out to them, when he’s on his knees with all their guns pointed at him: “Got tortured. Didn’t have any information. Sent me here.” He might pretend to pass out, then, for dramatic effect. This will lay the groundwork for Pike to come to him, to say “You know, I also hate all Grounders forever and I heard you got tortured by them, would you like to be in my Inner Circle?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. survivor's move

**Author's Note:**

> "he's a very dangerous man. he's a very dangerous person. he's not necessarily physically very imposing, but he's relentless. it would take you killing him - if he has a problem with you, you may as well kill him cause he won't stop."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pairing notes for those just joining us:  
> emori/john murphy - background, established, happens before the events of the story  
> clarke griffin/lexa - background, established  
> bellamy blake/john murphy - both of them express interest in each other  
> monty green/john murphy - monty expresses interest in murphy  
> bryan/nathan miller - established relationship, tension  
> nathan miller/monty green - miller expresses interest in monty

Once, he told Emori this: “The only thing that matters is not putting me in a cage.” 

He’s been in cages most of his life: in the Ark, the Grounder prison camp, the bunker; he would give a lot to not do that again.

His death would be so easy. All he has to do is tell them about the bitch in the red dress, the backpack, Jaha. It might even feel good to tell someone else about it. It would be so easy to avoid a cage.

He is tied to a horse, blindfolded. He doesn’t say anything. It would be so easy to avoid a cage.

That’s not a survivor’s move.

-.-

They don’t ask him any questions. They don’t ask him any questions until they arrive at the Grounder capital, which is the tallest tower. Emori has talked about it. She says it’s fantastic. He doesn’t think it’s all that great when they shove him up two flights of stairs and torture him for information about Clarke Griffin.

He hasn’t seen her in six months. The last time was after Finn’s death. On the hill; at night; in the dark, only the torches lighting the gathering. Clarke had talked to the Commander and then to Finn: she had taken Raven’s glass and instead of murdering the Grounders, she mercy-killed Finn instead. In the wake of Raven’s scream, he felt a surge of inexplicable pride well within him.

He tried to talk to her, after. “That was good,” he said. “What you did for Finn. You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

She had taken him by the collar and slammed him against the wall of the Ark. “Don’t tell me how I should feel, Murphy.” He let himself tremble underneath her. He had always trusted Clarke to be gentle with him: if not because of her heart, then because of her guilt over letting him hang. 

“I’m just trying to help,” he says, and keeps his voice even, cool.

“I didn’t ask for it,” snarls Clarke, shaking him a little. Her voice comes out rough this time, like she’s been sleeping on it. She makes a noise to herself, and then she pulls off and lets him go.

She’s gone down the hallway. He thinks about her hands on his shoulders - enough to hold, not to hurt. 

He doesn’t reveal any of this under torture. Then he’s asked about Jaha’s bluechip, and, well, he doesn’t even know anything about that. 

He passes out eventually; from blood loss or from pain, he doesn’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Maybe it’s from exhaustion. That would almost be healthy.

He wakes up trapped in a box. Wooden. His hands are cuffed behind him. He’s blindfolded. He sleeps it off.

The only thing that matters / is not putting me in a cage.

Cage is lookin’ pretty nice right now.

-.-

“What is this?” It’s Clarke’s voice outside. His box is set down.

“A consolation prize, if you will,” says the voice of the guy who last tortured him. Jesus Christ.

The box is opened from the top. He doesn’t move.

“Oh my God,” he hears Clarke say. “Murphy.”

The Commander says something in her chopped language. 

They've taken him to Clarke. They’ve taken him to the Commanders.


	2. breik em au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke addresses The Candle Issue. Murphy is freed from the box.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng helped out by trigedasleng.info! Many thanks to all of the linguistics nerds who have put a lot of thought into this language and written resources for me to look at. y'all are heroes

Lexa’s bed is probably the coolest thing ever. It’s larger than any of the pallets on the Ark, and definitely the softest thing she’s ever slept on. Lexa’s room is pretty cool in itself, honestly. She’s kind of Clarke’s princess at the top of a tower, and she has a really good view of Polis and her whole kingdom.

There’s just one problem.

Why are there always so _many_ candles?

Like, okay, she gets it. For a long time, Grounders refused to use anything “modern”; Polis has no access to a generator and it isn’t hooked up for lighting anyway. She knows that things have to be lit with fire. Candles are a necessity.

But. There are just _so many._ They’re so small. And flickery. They don’t even provide good lighting. There’s no reason for so many.

So Clarke puts aside her worries for Arkadia. Clarke sets aside jus drein jus daun. Clarke sets aside her people. Just for a little bit.

When Lexa wakes up, Clarke says this: “We need to talk.”

Lexa is instantly alert. Clarke knows those are some hot-button keywords. But this is an important issue. “Of course,” says Lexa. “Anything you need, Clarke.”

“Why are there so many candles?” she asks. Lexa opens her mouth, but Clarke cuts her off. “I know that there’s not a lot of light, but there’s no reason for there to be so many candles --”

“It’s traditional for the Commander --”

“It’s time to set the traditions aside, Lexa. These are a _fire hazard_.”

“I am prepared if there is a --” A smile is tugging at the corners of Lexa’s mouth. There’s a knock at the door. “Come in.”

It’s Titus with two men carrying another wooden box. Actually, it might be the same box. Clarke braces herself for another unpleasant surprise. “What is this?”

“A consolation prize, if you will.” says Titus, and then sweeps out with his two guards. Well that’s... ominous. What’s in the box? Do you really want to know? (No.)

Clarke opens the box. Another prisoner. His hands are cuffed behind him, and he’s wearing a blindfold. He’s shirtless, and his chest is covered in blood and cuts. So is his face. “Oh my God,” she says, aloud. “Murphy.”

“Em ste skai kru?” asks Lexa, dropping into Trigedasleng. “Yu gaf sen em?” _He is Sky Crew? You need him?_

“Ai nou. Em ste pleni.” _I don’t. He was pardoned._ Then: “Breik em au.” _Free him_.

Lexa steps forward. She grips Murphy by his armpits and lifts him out of the box. She sets him to stand, but he goes to his knees. It looks like he’s too unsteady on his feet to trust them.

Clarke reaches down to untie his blindfold. When it’s gone, he won’t look at her; keeps his eyes downcast. She grips his chin and forces his face upwards. His pupils are huge and he’s blinking back tears. Of course - his eyes are reacting from the darkness to the thousand+ candles Lexa has in this room.

He’s speaking suddenly, and very quickly. “I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t tell them anything about you, Clarke --please.”

Clarke has no idea what he’s talking about. She flicks her eyes up to Lexa.

“Ai nou noun.” _I don’t know, either._

Murphy is still babbling at her. She’s getting the impression that he was tortured by someone in Polis for information on her. She doesn’t know if she believes him about not telling them anything, but it’s really neither here nor there.

She’s not sure what she wants to do with Murphy in the long run, but in the short-term she wants to patch him up. “Come over here and sit on the chair,” she says, in Modern English.

“Please,” he says, voice cracking at the end. His eyes move to Lexa. He swallows, and then says “Breja.” _Please._ It’s presumably the only Trigdasleng he knows. “I swear I didn’t tell them anything.”

“I believe you,” she says, just so he’ll shut up. “Come here and sit on the chair. I just want to check your injuries.”

He struggles to his feet and goes to sit on the chair. She gets her med kit out from under Lexa’s bed.

Patching Murphy up is like slipping back into an old habit. He had never come to her for help back at the dropship, bruised after a fight, but plenty of other people had. He’ll need stitches. “Who did this to you?” she asks.

He flinches away from her touch. “Please,” he says. “I’ll be good.”

His response doesn’t match her question. She doesn’t want to admit she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s made a conclusion in his head, and she doesn’t want to give up her advantage. She turns to Lexa. “Ai don as yu prom op?” Can you question him?

Lexa’s face furrows, but she nods. Clarke leaves her to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> talk to me at icetastrophe.tumblr.com!


	3. reactive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy panics and Lexa plots.

It’s Clarke. It’s Clarke and the only thing he can think is _she ordered it. She was here the whole time, and she ordered the torture. To see if I was a traitor._

Clarke and the Commander are speaking in Grounder. About what? The best ways to chop him up and eat him? It sounds like English, but like it’s been caught up halfway in your throat and spat out. He knows _skai kru_ , but that’s all. Blinded, he’s not even sure if he can tell which Commander is which. The Commander - the Grounder Commander, the one that isn’t Clarke - has a sharper voice, maybe.

Someone lifts him by his armpits out of the box. They set him down on his feet, but he goes to his knees almost immediately. He would rather them think him helpless and terrified than a threat. Not that it’s untrue.

Hands are reaching around the back of his head, untying his blindfold. He struggles not to flinch. It’s bright (no shit, Murphy). His eyes fill with tears involuntarily, so he averts his eyes from the thousands of candles in the room -- why are there so many candles in this place? Assuming he’s still in Polis, of course, which he has no way of knowing. Terrifying, right? -- to the floor. It’s concrete. At his knees. His pants are even scuffed up, and nothing’s been done to them.

Clarke takes his chin and forces his face upwards to meet her eyes. Her features don’t give anything away, but everything is so _bright_ he could be missing the subtleties. He blinks back tears -- and -- something unhinges in him. No. It’s more like he’s slipped, like he was held together tightly and something unwound and now he’s falling forward. Except he’s not falling forward, he’s talking, so quickly he can hardly keep up with himself. “I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t tell them anything about you, Clarke -- please.”

Clarke looks to the Commander, and the Commander says something evil, probably. He keeps talking. Shut up, Murphy. Clarke cuts through his noise. “Come over here and sit on the chair.”

He stays on his knees. He hears himself pleading to them, both of them, in Grounder, in English. He feels like he’s out of his body, like he’s watching himself fuck himself over from a distance.

“I believe you,” Clarke says. His mouth stops moving. He feels kind of tingly; in his cheek, his throat, his legs. Light-headed. “Come here and sit on the chair. I just want to check your injuries.”

He shifts his weight to the front of his knees, rocks back on his toes and feels the strain in his shoulders as he gets to his feet. Standing, he’s taller than her. He sits on the chair that Clarke must have abandoned when he was brought in; it’s soft and sinks a little underneath his weight. It reminds him of how filthy he is.

Clarke fetches something from underneath the bed - is this her bedroom? Is it the Commander’s? What were they doing before? She sits across from him, leaning over to touch his face with a cool cloth. Again, he struggles not to flinch. It’s easier now that he can see her, but it’s still so bright. He closes his eyes against the dizziness. “Who did this to you?”

She knows. She _has to know_. She’s testing him, and he can’t work his way around this problem; there’s blood in the back of his throat and he knows that she hates him and there’s pity? disgust? in her eyes and he can smell alcohol and something cloying. She’s going to send him back to be tortured again if he doesn’t get this exactly right. “Please,” he says, instead of answering her question. “I’ll be good.”

He’s answered wrong. She turns to the Commander and asks her a question in Grounder, who nods in assent. Then she leaves.

The Commander’s going to kill him. Sure of this conclusion, he relaxes his muscles and leans back against the chair. It puts pressure on his bound arms, which sends pain shooting up his shoulders, so he sits up straight again.

The Commander takes Clarke’s seat. “I think you could be useful to us, John Murphy.”

-.-

Lexa became the Commander at sixteen, and worked to build a Coalition of all twelve clans. Just as the Coalition solidified, the Sky People, or what she now understands is the original 100, landed; sometimes she thinks it’s the only reason that the Coalition stayed in place. They had someone new to antagonize; someone else to wage war upon. This is ridiculous, of course: peace is possible.

Sometimes she thinks about Finncollins of the Sky People; about how he arranged the first peace meetings but eventually massacred his enemies. It was, she understands, in a desperate attempt to find Clarke. Because he was in love.

She would like to think her attempts are not so desperate. She would like to think that peace is possible. Jus drein jus daun. Blood must not have blood. It’s a nice thought.

But two months ago, it hadn’t seemed possible. When the Sky People banished John Murphy from their camp, she had ridden out to witness the torture. It had taken him three days to break, which, relatively, is a long time -- especially for a person who doesn’t appear to be a warrior. In her experience, he is reactive rather than a catalyst.

He’ll make an excellent pawn.

Unfortunately, he’s succumbed to unconsciousness.

She’ll talk this over with Clarke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the chapter titles! Also, I'm hoping this is the last overlapping-but-different-perspectives chapter I'll have to write. Fingers crossed!
> 
> update 3/22/2016 - i changed the chapter titles again, sorry
> 
> talk to me at icetastrophe.tumblr.com!


	4. clarke and lexa are totally banging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy gets a mission. Lexa is betrayed.

Once, in the woods with Emori, high off their victory and thievery, she had started kissing him. And - he’s not used to being touched, and he’s definitely not used to being touched kindly, so it’s a surprise - and he lets her kiss him. He doesn’t know how to kiss back - all teeth and lips and tongue, but Emori doesn’t seem to mind. She laughs, in that warm, deep way of hers, and teaches him.

And then - her hands are tugging at his shirt, and he lets her take it. She takes off her own. Surprise; she’s made of skin and bones like the rest of them. He touches her, and she guides him: hips, stomach, breasts, collarbone. Then: her hands on him, and bile is rising in his throat - her fingers touch his ribcage, his chest - he pulls away from her. It’s not that she’s deformed, or damaged, it’s just -- He lets her think whatever she wants.

It’s not her. It’s him. He’s fucked up.

But everyone already knows that.

\---

He always wakes up slowly. When he finds himself returning to consciousness, he stays still and keeps his eyes closed and tries to understand what’s happening before he makes it known that he’s awake. It’s been working well for him the past few days.

He’s lying down, still shirtless, cuffed by one ankle to -- a bed? Wow, going all out there. He assess his injuries: face is fucked up, one eye swollen shut, but it might get better; open cuts on his torso and back, but at least one of them has been bandaged and cleaned. Bruises speckle his body, and he aches all over, but that’s scarcely different. All in all, he made it out of this fairly unharmed - Grounder knew what he was doing.

Good for him. He lets himself sit up, opens his eyes. He examines the cuff on his ankle. Looks like it needs a key. He gets out of the bed. There’s enough chain for him to walk to the window. Is this what power feels like? Looking out over a whole world and saying “I’m responsible for that”? If it is, he’s not sure he can count himself as power-hungry anymore. It’s a nice view anyway.

“John Murphy of the Sky People,” says someone -- the Commander! -- behind him. He turns around too fast and nearly trips on the chain. He’s kind of upset that he didn’t hear her come in.

“Who wants to know?” he bites out, which isn’t a very good comeback to a not-insult, but whatever. He’s done being scared.

“I do,” says the Commander. “I think you could be useful to me.”

Something rises in his chest -- it’s something he’s held close to himself for a long time. The desire to be _useful_ to someone - to be allowed to stay at the dropship, to not be banished again. Even with Emori -- he was useful to her, in their con. If he could be useful to the Commander -- useful to Clarke --

“How?” he asks, and tries not to let his desire leak into his voice.

“Clarke says that you have murdered Sky Persons in the past. How did you do that?”

”Uh,” he says, because, _what_. Are two murders he committed almost a year ago about to get him a _job_? As, what, an assassin? “Suffocation with plastic bags. They were both asleep.”

“A coward’s death,” says the Commander, thoughtfully. He flinches. “Do you think you could do it again?”

”Suffocate someone? Probably.”

“You will go to the Sky camp and you will kill Commander -- Chancellor -- Pike.”

There’s a new Chancellor? “What’s in it for me?”

The Commander levels her gaze at him. He swallows. They both know he’ll do it. She’s read him right.

“Clarke will be by later,” says the Commander. “I’ll see to it that you’re fed.”

-.-

Food is brought to him later: strange spiced meat and a vegetable he can’t recognize. The meat reminds him of the meat he was given in the Grounder prison camp, and he can’t eat it. The vegetables go down fine, though.

Clarke comes by after. They swap stories: his about Jaha and the City of Light; hers, about how she killed the Mountain Men without the help of the Commander, about the newest Chancellor, Pike, the massacre of three hundred, Bellamy’s betrayal. Also, the Commander’s name is Lexa. Clarke and Lexa are totally banging, or at least they want to be. Murphy’s not stupid. He gets it; being the two leaders after the end of the world is hard, and nobody understands. Honestly, he doesn’t want to.

They talk about the Commander’s -- Lexa’s -- plan to use him as an assassin. “You’ll have to get close to Bellamy,” she says. “Incapacitate Bellamy, and then kill Pike.”

”I don’t know what makes you think I am capable of that,” he tells her, because he doesn’t.

“Figure it out,” she shrugs. “Octavia will help where she can, and Kane, and my mom -- but you can’t be seen with them. You have to get into the inner circle.”

”What if they just shoot me on sight after I get there?”

”I don’t think that will happen,” Clarke says. “I think -- I think Pike will appreciate your past deeds. Did you have him for Earth Skills?”

”Didn’t get that far in school,” he admits.

After they talk, Clarke looks at his cuts again. “Nothing’s infected,” she tells him. “The worst thing is going to be your black eye, I think. We’ll wait a day to see if the swelling goes down.”

Her hands are so gentle. He’s reminded of Emori, and he feels sick. All he says is, “Okay.”

She doesn’t let him off his ankle chain, and he doesn’t ask her to.

-.-

When night comes and the sun from outside fades, someone stops by to light the candles around the room.

It’s his torturer.

He tries to slow down his breathing; tells himself that the bald guy has no reason to harm him now, he’s under Clarke’s protection, she’s forgiven him. He’s useful now, needed. He opens his mouth to tell the guy to fuck off, maybe, but the Grounder snaps “Shut up,” which is a different tact than when he was trying to get Murphy to talk.

And then -- in the light of the candles, his former tormentor grips his hair and uses his gasp to shove a gag in between his teeth. His struggles are ineffective; soon, his hands are tied together behind his back. There’s a little trouble with the ankle cuff, but Baldy just breaks the chain with his bare hands. Jesus.

He’s shoved down the corridor again.

This is honestly becoming a real problem for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave comments! let me know what you think!
> 
> edit 3/7/2015 - made some small edits


	5. mofi kom skaikru

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Titus attacks. Murphy puts on a shirt. More Trigedasleng.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is very long and i have no remorse about it

It wouldn’t be so bad, except Baldy knows all of his weak spots: the hand on the back of his neck, the pressure against his throat. He’s taken to what he thinks is Clarke’s room, maybe, or the rooms just outside it. He’s mostly been dragged through corridors, so he’s really not sure how the floor plan of Polis is set up. He thinks Clarke is just inside. He would yell, but -- Baldy is probably going to kill him, right here, and all he can think about is how he’ll do anything to get the hand off his throat.

Baldy eventually lets off the pressure, after setting him in a chair and tying his hands behind him. He yanks at the ropes. They’re already coming loose. That’s good to know, but there’s no point in escaping when Baldy is right here.

Clarke emerges from the bedroom, shirt askew, looking -- she’s definitely got an afterglow. Awkward. “Oh my God,” she says when she sees him. “Murphy.” She kneels down, starts fiddling with the gag. He cuts his eyes over to Baldy.

“Titus, what are you --”

“He’s alive,” says Baldy/Titus, which, _obviously_. “He was caught stealing in the Commander’s woods.”

“Hey, you’re okay, you’re okay,” Clarke is saying, meaningless platitudes. He can feel her hands shaking, and she can’t find the knot of the gag.

“Please don’t,” says Titus, revealing that he’s holding Murphy’s gun from a century past. Wow, he thought that was lost a long time ago. Nice to know it’s still doing well. Unlike him. “I’m sorry it had to be like this, Clarke.” (That’s bullshit, he thinks, disconnected.)

Clarke is standing up now, raising her hands in supplication. “You don’t have to do this. I’m leaving at dawn. Just let me take Murphy and go.” Titus is raising the gun. “She’ll know it was you.”

“She’ll think it was him. Skaikru weapon, skaikru thief. She’ll be angry -- maybe even angry enough to declare war.” He shoots, but Clarke ducks. The bullet ricochets off the metal whatever between them.

He tugs his hands out of the ropes. He has no play here. He runs at Titus, tackles him. It’s like running into a brick wall. Clarke throws a stool at them both. They go down. He finds Titus’s wrist, presses hard on his pulse point. He drops the gun. Titus’s hand is on his throat again, and he resists the urge to go still, to _obey_ \-- Clarke has the gun.

He struggles in Titus’s grip. Now it’s going to be some version of “give me the gun so I can kill you and I won’t strangle this kid to death”. He has to get out, but he doesn’t have any tricks up his sleeve and obviously Titus can fuck him up.

The Commander emerges from her room. She’s sleepy-eyed but startled. “I heard noises,” she says.

Titus _squeezes_ \-- and then lets him go. He scrambles away and starts working at the knot of the gag. Clarke and Lexa are talking, voices rising in pitched emotion, and he should get out of here. He should get out of here while he can.

He sits down on one of the empty chairs. His fingers work at the knot of his gag until it pulls free from his mouth. He pulls his knees up to his chest, for protection, for warmth. He watches Clarke and the Commander argue in Grounder -- it might not be an argument, but everything sounds sharp and rough in that language -- and Titus gets arrested, maybe. Lexa and Clarke embrace. Nobody pays attention to him for a long while.

He dozes.

-.-

He wakes at someone touching his elbow. He starts and flinches back. It’s a Grounder he doesn’t know. “Mofi kom skaikru,” the Grounder says, then points to himself. “Ai laik Moss kom oshokru.” An introduction? Murphy just shrugs at him. The boy -- Moss? -- hands him a note.

_can you even read? -Clarke_

He guesses that’s the best he’s going to get, so he lets Moss grip him by the elbow and take him back to the room he had occupied before. He sits on the bed and watches with interest as Moss fiddles with the broken chain and the cuff on his ankle. He takes the cuff off his ankle and the chain off the bed, then leaves the room.

Murphy lays down, feeling strangely elated for the first time in a long time. He’s relatively free and there are good things coming his way: trust, acceptance, better food. Maybe after he’s singlehandedly saved the free world, he can find Emori again. It’s a nice thought: he feels giddy with possibilities.

Moss returns after a length of time, with a basin of water and a stack of clothes. He offers Murphy a shy smile. Murphy can’t think of a reason not to return it. The boy leaves again.

They’re the clothes he arrived in, except they’ve been washed, and, in a couple places, sewn up. He runs his fingers over the material, and fights down his gratitude. He should probably save them for tomorrow - he shouldn’t sleep in them. He pulls on the shirt anyway. He does wash his face as well, taking great care over his swollen eye.

Moss comes back one last time to attach the chain to the bed again, and then to his ankle. Murphy lets him, rolls up the leg of his pants so he has better access. Murphy watches him pocket the key. Unexpectedly, Moss reaches out and takes Murphy’s hand. Murphy does his very best not to flinch. “Biyo moba,” he intones.

Murphy has no idea what that means. “It’s fine,” he says anyway, and smiles at him again. Moss gives a tentative smile back. He picks up the water basin and leaves.

He had considered sleeping before, but now he feels too keyed up to think about it. He explores the limits of the ankle chain again: to the window, to the chest at the end of his bed. Not long enough for him to stand at the end of the chest and open it. The cuff has a simple lock -- given twenty minutes and a paperclip, he could probably get out of it.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t try. Escape is not the first thing on his mind. If he did, he doesn’t know where he would go -- he doesn’t know where Polis is, or how to get back to Camp Jaha; here, there are things waiting for him, a promise of a mission, of better things.

The door opens. He sits up. It’s Moss again, with a small plate. Moss comes over to sit next to him on the bed, and holds the plate out. Murphy hesitates. “Daunde laik yun.” says Moss.

He takes the plate. On it is a pastry? candy? of some sort. At Moss’ gesture, he takes a bite. Sweetness explodes in his mouth. He might make a sound, because Moss grins at him; pure glee lighting up his features. He hasn’t had a sweet thing like this since -- probably since before his dad died. He’s not good at savoring things, but when the dessert is gone he wishes he was. His throat feels heavy with the sugar. “Thank you,” he tells Moss, and then again, more forceful: “Thank you.”

\---

In the morning, Clarke comes to talk to him. “Sorry about that whole. Thing. With Titus.”

“Not your fault. I assume.” says Murphy. “Sorry for being kind of useless.”

“You were more than helpful,” Clarke assures him, and Murphy kind of likes this; Clarke talking to him like they might be friends. “Did you want to come to his execution?”

“I’m good.” To his surprise, he’s never planned out Titus’s death, not even in the privacy of his own head. Knowing that he’s dead will only bring him relief, not victory. Check out that character development. Mbege would be proud.

“This morning, a kill order went into effect; any Sky Person found outside a five-mile radius of their base will be killed on sight by the Grounder blockade. We were hoping to get you inside before the kill order went into effect; now we’re not sure how to get you through the blockade without arousing suspicion.”

“You’re coming with me, though, right? The Grounders would let you through, easy.”

Clarke shakes her head. “I would be arrested for treason. And besides --” She looks down at her hands. “Lexa has invited me to stay with her. In Polis.”

Her cheeks have gone red. Murphy doesn’t think he’s ever felt that way about anybody. It’s cute.

“If you’re not coming with me --” He stops the sentence, rearranges his thoughts. “I could be your Trojan horse.”

“What?”

“You could -- the Grounders could pretend to offer me as a peace offering. I could go back. In the box.”

“You’re a shit peace offering,” muses Clarke.

“Yeah, but I’m Skaikru, and that’s all the Grounders would see.”

“Hm.” says Clarke. “It could work. You’re looking relatively clean for someone who was captured by the Grounders, though.”

“Sorry.”

Clarke barks out a laugh. “I’ll talk about it with Lexa. Is there anything you need? I’ll get you a poultice for your eye, since the swelling is going down so slowly.”

He shrugs. “There was a girl I was travelling with? Her name is Emori. I --” If Emori hears people in Polis are asking after her, she’d probably dig herself deeper into the shadows. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

“No,” Clarke says. “What is it? What about Emori?”

“She has a radiation mutation,” he says. “If she heard anybody was asking about her, she’d head for the hills. It’s fine.”

“If you say so,” says Clarke.

He looks down at his hands. He wants to say so _how is Lexa_ in a teasing tone, but they’re not friends. They’re getting somewhere, but they’re not friends.

Clarke reaches for his hand. He lets her take it, and she squeezes it. “Thanks. For agreeing to this.”

So much hand-holding. It must be a Grounder thing. “It’s fine,” he says, because he doesn’t really understand her words either. It was the only option presented to him that made any sense.

Things are looking up for Mofi kom Skaikru, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Murphy doesn't understand Trigdasleng, here are my translation notes:  
> mofi kom skaikru - murphy of the sky people  
> ai laik moss kom oshokru - i am moss of the ocean people (oshokru)  
> biyo moba - I'm sorry/I apologize  
> daunde laik yun - that's yours
> 
> edit 3/10/2016  
> originally Moss was part of the Boat People, who Lincoln talks about in season 1, but there's an actual name for the Boat People, Floundkru, so now "oshokru" is Ocean People and I like to think that it's somewhere around California but I don't actually know anything about oceans so it could be nearer
> 
> also i'd like to clarify that moss is like. thirteen or fourteen. v smoll  
> want to talk to me? leave a comment! or talk to me at icetastrophe.tumblr.com! thanks for reading!


	6. anything for you, princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING for: Scene of torture (nothing graphic)
> 
> Murphy dreams, and prepares for his mission. Also, another titledrop!

He’s back in the dungeon underneath Polis. Lexa and Clarke are both there: Lexa to hurt him and Clarke to make sure he lives through it. He needs to look broken enough that Arkadia won’t suspect anything. He’s already practicing what he’ll spit out to them, when he’s on his knees with all their guns pointed at him: “Got tortured. Didn’t have any information. Sent me here.” He might pretend to pass out, then, for dramatic effect. This will lay the groundwork for Pike to come to him, to say “You know, I also hate all Grounders forever and I heard you got tortured by them, would you like to be in my Inner Circle?”

Lexa says something to Clarke, and Clarke laughs. Lexa is picking her tools: he can see she’s selected a whip made out of cords, and a tiny, sharp knife. “You’re going to have to tie me up,” he says shakily. Lexa nods without speaking. He lets Clarke lead him to the posts, where she ties his hands with red rope. He wonders what it was before Titus decided it was garbage and deemed it worthy of worship. He’s already stripped down to his pants, taken off his boots again. Bare feet and shirtless, helpless, waiting for it. It’s like the past two days haven’t happened at all.

“You ready for this, Murphy?” asks Clarke. He yanks at the ropes; they hold fast.

“Anything for you, Princess,” he hears himself say, already heady with anxiety.

Lexa is talking in Grounder to him, something that starts with “Mofi kom Skaikru” but quickly verges into nonsense. He figures if she actually wanted him to listen she would speak English.

Everything is happening behind him. He’s straining injuries that have already happened, looking behind him for her. They’re not paying attention to him; talking between themselves in Grounder, making fun of him for being weak. Well, joke’s on them. He is weak.

She doesn’t warn him before she starts whipping him, and it’s like he can’t even feel it. He can hear the sound against his skin, but not the impact. He can feel his blood rise to the surface, but not the pain.

He trusts Clarke not to go too far; he doesn’t trust Lexa but knows that he’s useful to her, to both of them: a pawn that they don’t want to fuck up too early. But he doesn’t know if he can take this without the pain.

He’s tugging at the ropes and it’s not Lexa who is hitting him, it’s Bellamy.

“And what, you wouldn’t have given them up? Because you’re better than me?”

“Damn right.”

It’s Bellamy holding a knife now, making shallow cuts at his collarbone, asking him if he’s loyal. Loyal to whom? The Grounders, Clarke, Bellamy, Pike? Himself, probably. Bellamy is holding the knife to his throat, but he can’t speak. Farther away, he hears Clarke say “ _Bellamy_ ,” in warning, in chastisement, but Bellamy is going to kill him, and he deserves it. A warm heat has settled somewhere below his stomach.

He wakes up coated in sweat. 

He’s fucked up.

But everyone already knows that.

\---

A healer comes by in the afternoon to spread false blood over his skin. She runs her hand over his bruises and scolds? him in Grounder. She gives him herbs to chew on. They make his voice hoarse and raw, like he’s been screaming for a long time. Clever.

Moss shows up again and tries to give him a lesson in his language. Murphy tries to be patient with him - he’s just a kid - but he’d already been through this with Emori and he knows he’s not smart. He snaps at him and he feels _bad_ , but he can’t communicate anything and his voice is fucked up and Moss ends up leaving in a huff, wounded. He feels worse about snapping at a kid than he ever has about killing two people. Only one of those things was necessary.

Finally, when the sun is in the middle of the sky, Clarke comes by. The healer is accompanying her. Clarke and the healer sit down across from him. The healer takes out a set of needles and ink. Ah, yes. The old stick and poke. The healer props up his uncuffed ankle on a low table, and while she’s disinfecting the area of skin above his Achilles tendon, Clarke explains. “It’s a sun tattoo,” she says. “It means you’re protected by Polis while you’re on your mission. The red beam, that’s this month -- the blue, that’s six months from now. If you don’t show up back here in six months with your mission completed - that’s killing Pike, by the way - to get this tattoo filled in before then, you’re marked unredeemed in the eyes of the law.”

“Which means?”

”Anyone can kill you, and nobody can demand blood for that act. But until then -- you’re protected.”

He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. “And if I’m -- redeemed?”

“You’ll be regarded as a hero. Probably as _ripa_ , or maybe _swimaripa_ \- your story will be told alongside mine.”

“That’s a lot of risk and reward, Princess,” he tells her. “What if I refuse?”

Clarke nods to the healer, who packs up her needles and leaves. “Little late for that now,” she says. Her eyes search for his, but he looks away. She doesn’t say: “Are you sure you want to do this?” She doesn’t give him a chance to back out. She feels guilty, but he heard what happened with the Last Mountain Man: she won’t let her guilt dictate her choices.

He shrugs anyway, letting the movement ache through his spine. “I’m good,” he says, and then, considering that lie, he repeats “I’ll be good.”

Clarke is looking at him strangely, and he wonders what it is he did. The moment passes, though, and she’s talking. “You were found in the Commander’s woods and taken here as a prisoner of war after Pike’s army killed the army sent to protect them. You don’t know how long it’s been since then - you were tortured but not for information which is good because you have nothing to give up. Do you need more details or do you think you can embellish on your own?”

He shrugs again, so Clarke presses on.

“It’s a six-hour ride back to Arkadia,” Clarke says. “You’re going to spend most of it in a cart, hopefully asleep or reviewing your plans. At the four-hour mark, your hands will be shackled behind your back by Prosper. At the five-hour mark, you’ll be given more of the straleoseed, which will strain your voice and possibly make you a little light-headed. A half-hour before you reach Arkadia, you’ll be gagged, blindfolded, and locked back in the box. After that -- it’s up to you.” Clarke searches his face again; whatever answer she hopes to find, he isn’t sure he can give. “Unfortunately I think I’ll have to keep your jacket, but you can keep your shirt, and your boots.” They’re good boots. He’s glad to have them. “You’ll be escorted by Kaya and Prosper -- they’re both great warriors.”

”Do they speak English?” he asks, which is all he cares about.

Clarke nods. “Octavia knows about your mission, but I wouldn’t tell anyone else. There are definitely people in Arkadia who don’t agree with Pike, but if you associate with them, you’ll have to do so in secret. And -- there’s no guarantee they’ll trust you, anyway.”

Murphy gives a harsh, startled bark that could be laughter. “Same old story.” he says.

Clarke gives him a tight smile. “Is there anything I can answer or do for you before you head out?”

“I -- Nobody’s been by with food.” He suspects the task might have been entrusted to Moss, but he fucked that up.

Clarke shakes her head. “You’ll get food when you get back to Arkadia.”

 _Setting up the illusion of torture, Clarke? Or just not willing to waste resources on me?_ He doesn’t say that out loud. “There was a kid who came here, Moss -- can you just tell him that I appreciated what he did?”

Clarke’s eyebrows furrow. “What he did?”

Murphy’s shoulders hunch in. “He was -- kind to me.”

Clarke softens. “Yeah,” she says. “I can do that for you. See you in six months?”

“May we meet again,” he tells her.

“May we meet again,” she replies in turn, and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> talk to me at icetastrophe.tumblr.com!
> 
> also I made a fanmix bc im trash  
> listen to it here:: http://8tracks.com/latitude-b/i-ll-be-good
> 
> swimaripa - fish (pike) killer
> 
> leave a comment! they really do mean a lot to me. if I update again before Thursday it'll be something fluffy and nice


	7. for your trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy is delivered to Arkadia. Clarke delivers something else, despite her guilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i need y'all to know that murphy pronounces "achilles" like "a-sheel" because greek pronunciation is not something they teach you in prison

Prosper is a tall, lanky man who comes to uncuff him from the bed. He watches as Murphy pulls on his boots and lets him follow him out of Polis instead of taking him by the elbow or shoulder. He appreciates that.

They let him into the back of the cart, which honestly and kind of unfortunately looks like every other cart he’s ever robbed. He doesn’t feel guilty about that either. There’s a couple of furs in the back, presumably for him to sleep on. “You should get some rest while you still can, _lukotwar_.”

Murphy bristles. “My name is Murphy.”

Prosper gives him a knife-smile. “I know.”

-.-

Clarke finds the kid Murphy asked about training with the other Nightbloods. She consulted with Lexa about this, and has brought a knife as a gift: wrapped with green cloth for luck.

”Moss kom oshokru,” _Moss of the Ocean People_. she says, holding the knife out. He’s starstruck. “Daunde laik yun. Kom Mofi. Em mochof yu.” _This is for you. From Murphy. He thanks you_. She smiles, and thinks about the children in Mount Weather.

-.-

But he can’t sleep. Whether it’s due to the cart’s movement, his anxiety, or just the fact that he’s gotten several nights of great sleep in recently, he doesn’t care. He watches hungrily as Prosper unpacks his lunch - some kind of fish, strange berries, and an apple. He feels stupid: thanks to Clarke, over the past few days he’s eaten very well. He shouldn’t expect more food now, especially food he can’t work for. Prosper notices, of course. He smiles that knife-smile again and tosses the apple to Murphy. “For your trouble, _lukotwar_.”

He catches the apple. He remembers being tied to the chair in Polis, Titus holding an apple just out of reach and his humiliation straining to get at it. He bites into the apple. It’s unexpectedly sweet. His face twists. Prosper laughs, but not unkindly. “Is it true you stopped an assassin from killing _heda_?”

Heda - that’s the Commander. He shrugs. “I was just there. He - Titus was gonna blame it on me. Clarke did most of the work.”

“Klok -- you call Wanheda by her given name? You know her?”

“Yeah,” he says. “You think I could have gotten into this mess on my own?”

Prosper laughs again, louder. Then he pulls his face into sobriety. “You’re our best hope for peace with skaikru, _lukotwar_.”

“Yeah,” says Murphy. “And all I have to do is kill a guy.”

Prosper doesn’t laugh that time. “ _Heda_ says that we are sending you in as a ... Trojan horse.”

Murphy sighs. “There’s a -- a legend from Old Earth, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, about a girl named Helen, the most beautiful girl ever. Two cities, Achilles and Troy warred over her hand in marriage. Troy let Achilles think they had won. They sent in a giant horse statue to congratulate Troy. But it turned out that the horse was hollow and full of Trojan soldiers, and when night fell, soldiers climbed out and opened the city gates of Achilles.” His voice feels like it’s burning. He swallows, but it only makes it worse. “What can you tell me about straleoseed?”

“The herb? It’s not good for much. It makes your throat sore and your voice strange. I don’t know anybody who has taken as much as you’ve been given. But I don’t know why anybody would. Why would a city get to marry a girl?”

“I don’t know, maybe she was a princess.”

“Even a princess can choose who she wants to marry.”

Murphy feels his irritation rising. “I don’t know, okay? It was a long time ago.”

Prosper raises his hands in mock supplication. “Alright, alright, _lukotwar_. I have no quarrel with you.”

“Sorry,” he says. And then: “Maybe she was a princess caught between two cultures, and she couldn’t pick her loyalty, so she went to war.”

“You’re thinking of Wanheda?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“We’re at war because Skaikru attacked us for no reason, _lukotwar_. Not because Wanheda is indecisive and flighty.”

Murphy shrugs. “That’s true. Besides, I think Clarke - Wanheda - has found who she wants to marry already.”

Prosper laughs again, and then sticks his head out the door. He yells something in Grounder to Kaya, and then gets back in. He opens the wooden box and takes out the shackles. Murphy feels himself flinching away.

Just shut up and take it, he tells himself. Clarke thinks it’s best. The Commander thinks it’s best. It’s nothing compared to what is coming. It’s best to ease into it. He’s the best hope both Polis and Arkadia have for peace, you would think he could stand being chained up for a little while.

Prosper catchess the fear in his eyes. “I can give you another hour, _lukotwar_ , if you take your herbs on your own.”

Murphy nods, near-frantic. He takes the herbs that Prosper hands him, chews, swallows. Honestly, his voice hurts worse than everything else, which he guesses is fine because nobody had to touch his neck to achieve the effect. He doesn’t say much after that, paralyzed by fear and pain combined.

A length of time passes. Prosper tells him about how he moved from his kru to Polis so that his younger brother could train with the rest of the Nightbloods. “He’ll probably never become Commander, of course - Heda likes Aden best, but it’s a good experience for him.” He’s glad for Prosper talking, for his noise.

Eventually, enough time passes that Prosper takes out the shackles again. Prosper is as gentle as he can be against Murphy’s trembling. “Is it really so bad, _lukotwar_?”

“I have spent - so much time - in a cage,” is what he says, which, damn, kid, that’s poetry. Sign me up to be the next Shakespeare.

Prosper squeezes his shoulder, presumably in sympathy. Murphy yanks at the cuffs. It’s fine, he’s fine, it’s nothing. Tamp it down, John, there’s no time for your hysterics now. Chill it.

“It’s only half an hour before we reach the Skaikru camp,” Prosper tells him. Murphy nods, and braces himself.

Prosper is holding the gag he’s been provided, which is just a strip of rough cloth. “This wouldn’t stop anyone from talking,” he remarks disdainfully.

“When I was in the Grounder prison camp, they would gag me like that when I got too mouthy with them. To remind me not to talk unless I wanted more pain, to remind me that all I was good for was screaming.”

Prosper wrinkles his nose. “ _Foto_. In Oshokru, we just drown people.”

“You -- you’re from oh-sho crew?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Your brother is Moss?” Small world. At Prosper’s affirmation, he says: “He was kind to me.”

Prosper snorts. “That’s why he’ll never be a great Commander.”

Murphy lets him tie the gag between his teeth. It tastes like roughness, and the forest. Prosper helps him step into the box; it’s smaller than he remembers. He arranges his limbs so that he’s sitting cross-legged with his hands behind him. When the lid of the box comes down, he’ll have to bend over, but not by much. Before the blindfold, Prosper touches his shoulder. “May we meet again.”

Murphy is too well-trained to reply, so he nods. Darkness envelopes him, and he leans down as the top of the box comes over him.

Prosper knocks on the side of the box. “Stay awake, _lukotwar_. We’ve got company.”

The cart stops suddenly, and Kaya shouts something. There are several indistinct and faraway noises, and then there’s the thump of two bodies hitting the floor. “Looks like a watch,” Prosper is saying to Kaya.

“Are they out cold?” asks Kaya.

Prosper kicks one of the bodies, and there’s a groan. “Not quite.”

“Good,” she replies, and the cart is moving again.

Soon enough, the unconscious members of Pike’s become slightly more conscious, but neither of them is capable of leaving or apparently having any curiousity about the wooden box in the corner. He hears the gate of Arkadia opening, and someone outside -- Bellamy? -- says “Talk.”

“We seek the one you call Pike,” says Kaya.

“Why?” It’s definitely Bellamy.

“An army has fallen, blood soaking the earth where he took their lives, one by one.”

“Welcome to the war against Skaikru,” says Bellamy, and what? That doesn’t even make sense.

“Life was taken. We demand life in return.”

“My life?” asks ?????, presumably Pike Himself, the One and Only.

“What are your terms, sir?” asks Bellamy.

“Come with us,” says Kaya. “We walk away.”

“Walk away?” asks Pike. “From what?”

“By order of the Commander, you have been surrounded by an army of the twelve clans. In every direction, warriors wait to kill anyone who attempts to cross the blockade. This is your last warning.”

Prosper is back in the cart now, dragging out whoever they caught on watch. “Mel!” shouts someone. Presumably Mel was one of the two on watch. Murphy is glad she’s still alive, after everything that’s been done to save her.

“Anyone else who crosses the border will take a long time to die,” promises Prosper.

“Bellamy, fall back,” Pike is saying. “That’s an order.”

“If you do not give up your leader,” says Prosper. “You will all take a long time to die. Choose the side that’s best for your people.”

What’s taking him so long? If he’s going to be a Trojan horse, at least set him inside Troy already.

The box starts moving again, sliding along the floor of the cart. “But first, here is a sign of good will from us. Yours, returned.” The box is picked up, carried several feet, and set down in the grass before the gate.

“I’ve seen this before,” Bellamy is saying in harsh, quiet tones to Pike. Yeah? Did you study Greek history in lockup too, Bellamy? Didn’t think so.

“Open the box, Bellamy.”

”We don’t know --”

“That’s an order.”

The top of the box is opened. “It’s -- oh my God, it’s Murphy.” Typical.

“Bring him in,” says Pike, and the top of the box closes on him again.

“Let it be known that the new order is this: Jus drein no jus daun. Blood must not have blood. Bring us your leader. You don’t all have to die.” With that, he presumes Kaya and Prosper are gone.

The box is picked up again, and carried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigedasleng notes:  
> foto - "bad", but Prosper uses it to mean 'gross'
> 
> next update: The Bellamy/Murphy Reunion You've All Been Waiting For
> 
> in the meantime, talk to me at mareap.tumblr.com, or leave a comment! thanks for reading!


	8. i'm not here to hurt you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotions rise. Murphy learns a word in Grounder. Bellamy's a jerk. Octavia and Murphy talk!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: description of torture, including throwing up  
> if you want to skip it, start reading the sentence "What little he can see of Murphy’s skin blanches" and then skip the whole paragraph
> 
> also, click [here](http://icetastrophe.tumblr.com/post/140847837718/top-murphys-room-in-polis-the-black-line-is-how) for a visual reference 
> 
> this chapter brought to you by The Worst Internet Connection Ever (I still haven't seen 3x08)

Bellamy doesn’t get to be there for the initial interrogation. He takes Murphy out of the box and undoes his gag, and then he’s sent to Medical for quarantine. Murphy’s been a biological weapon before; Pike’s not taking any chances.

Six hours later, showing no signs of having been infected with anything except mild annoyance, he’s released to join Pike for the second interrogation, which he understands is possible because Murphy is no longer unconscious.

The Ark, under the Exodus Charter, doesn’t believe in torture to get information. At least, they don’t believe in heavy-handed pain. Murphy is allowed to sit, his hands cuffed in front of him and to the table they’ve pulled from somewhere else. He is still blindfolded.

Murphy is explaining to Pike what happened to him in an even, cool voice. Occasionally, his voice gives out in the middle of a sentence, and it takes him several seconds to regain it. Pike asks him if he would like some water. Murphy doesn’t have enough speech left to say yes, so Pike nods to Delaney, standing guard directly behind Murphy. Delaney fills a glass. With a little awkward maneuvering, Delaney tips the glass into Murphy’s mouth. Murphy swallows, once, twice. Bellamy watches his Adam’s apple. It’s hard to tell his expression behind the bruises and the blindfold, but Bellamy suspects he might be grateful.

When Bellamy enters the room and pulls up a chair, Murphy starts violently, wrenching his arms against the cuffs. “Come _on_ ,” he yells. “I’m telling the truth.”

“It’s just me,” Bellamy says. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Oh,” says Murphy, and then, half-viciously, “just who I wanted to -- see.” His voice drops out at the end, realizing the irony.

“You were tortured by the Grounders,” reiterates Bellamy, picking up where Pike left off. He can feel Pike’s eyes on him, calculating. “What did you tell them?”

”I told them _everything_ ,” snaps Murphy. “I would have lied to them if I thought that would make them stop.” His voice is picking up more emotion now that Bellamy is in the room. He tries, visibly, to tamp it down. “But I don’t -- didn’t -- know anything useful. I know the camp from six months ago, I know about the woods, and I know about the dropship. After a while, they stopped asking questions, but they kept hurting me. Then they put me in a box, and now I’m here.”

Bellamy leans forward. He wants the emotion in Murphy’s voice back, wants to elicit a reaction from him. “Is there anything else you’re not telling us?”

What little he can see of Murphy’s skin blanches. His voice gets quieter. “I don’t know, Bellamy. Do you want to hear about how I screamed? Do you want to hear about how I begged for food and ate it from their hands, and about how they made me throw it up ten minutes later? About how they flayed the skin from my feet so I would stop trying to run away? No? Then maybe you shouldn’t ask.”

“I believe you,” says Pike. “Unfortunately, the Council has voted to keep you in solitary for the next forty-one hours, to make sure you’re not carrying any diseases to pass along.” Bellamy cuts his eyes to Pike. The Council has done no such thing. “You are pardoned for your crime of treason.” He nods to Bellamy.

Bellamy unlocks Murphy from the table and leads him blind to solitary. He cuffs Murphy to the support railing. Murphy waits, in silence.

Bellamy pulls off the blindfold. Murphy yells, and yanks his hands upward, as if to ward off the light.

Bellamy leaves him like that. He sets Miller as the watch. He’ll take over for him in the morning.

\---

Octavia comes to visit him in lockup. “Yu chich op?” she asks.

“No,” he says. He flicks his eyes to the door, to the guard who can hear their whole conversation. “Safe?”

“It’s Miller,” she replies, which doesn’t mean a lot to him.

”You trust me?”

She shrugs, the movement easy on her shoulders. She points at his leg: “Can I see your tattoo?”

He rattles the cuffs. “Later. They told me I was rooming with Bellamy. You can stop by.”

She grins at him. “Can I do anything to help you until then?”

He hesitates, and then: “Can you keep medical off my back? For at least awhile. I’m not as injured as I look.”

Octavia considers it. “I can distract them, but that’s about it.”

“Okay,” he says. He’ll deal with that later. “Do you know what _lukotwar_ means?”

”Friend-war, technically. It’s also a friendly word for ‘spy’ - the unfriendly word would be, uh, _ripawar_.”

Huh. “Thanks.”

”No problem.”

\----

Pike visits him next. He’s all like “Hey, so I heard you hated the Grounders. I think you should choose the Right Side™ and be in my Inner Circle™. You’re useful because you know all of the surrounding area. Also, you’re rooming with Bellamy. Cheerio, goodbye!”

Well, he thinks. That was _fucking easy_.

\----

Murphy slouches into Bellamy’s room as soon as they release him from lockup, all attitude and agony. Bellamy unlocks his handcuffs, and Murphy lets his hands fall to his side. “You get top bunk,” he tells him. He taps the smaller dresser, the one farther away from the door. “You can use the top two drawers in this. The desk is shared between us, but I don’t think you’ll be doing much studying.”

Murphy crosses the room to sit at the desk. He starts opening drawers randomly; pencils roll and clatter. Bellamy continues, although he isn’t sure if Murphy is still listening, if he’s just fiddling. “Your curfew is 20:00, lights out at 22:00. You need to screen your visitors by me first. If you do get visitors, or if you’re alone, the door needs to stay open. No alcohol. You can’t take Jaha’s --”

“You this much of a dick to everyone you room with, or am I a special case?” Murphy is kicking off his boots and leaving them by the smaller dresser. He’s stripping off his shirt and folding it carefully in the top drawer. He doesn’t have scars - he still has open wounds.

Bellamy has his hand on Murphy’s shoulder and is turning him around before he can think. They’re face to face now, too close together. “You need to go to Medical,” he says, his fingers smeared with Murphy’s blood.

“Fuck off,” Murphy snarls, and climbs to the top bunk.

Bellamy waits, and reaches for Murphy’s wrist, to cuff him to the bed. Murphy hisses and pulls away, like an untamed cat. “ _Stop,_ ” he says, his voice wrecked, and Bellamy remembers that he spent a long time screaming for mercy he knew he wouldn’t get.

“I don’t trust you,” Bellamy says stupidly.

“That’s great.” Murphy pulls his blanket over himself, turns away.

Bellamy retreats to his bunk. “Go to Medical in the morning,” he says. “That’s an order.”

“Go fuck yourself. _Sir_.”

\---

He thinks of Bellamy’s hand on his shoulder, fingers pressing to bruise. He imagines being trapped in this room every night, 20:00 to 22:00, waiting for Bellamy to cuff him to the bed. Maybe, if he were not so raw, so tender, he would have let Bellamy do it. He remembers the confines of the ankle chain, of it tangling in his sleep. Maybe, in another world, he would submit to Bellamy willingly.

Maybe he’d do it now, if he weren’t such a _dick_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> check out that SLOW BURN
> 
> [come talk to me on tumblr!](icetastrophe.tumblr.com/ask) or leave a comment here! thanks for reading!
> 
> end notes:  
> this was so much gayer than I intended it to be. next chapter will feature stuff I actually wanted to be in this chapter; i.e Your Faves, Monty, Raven, and Miller. also, I'm sorry that I'm no good at writing Octavia. She's my Unexpected Favorite.
> 
> also Delaney the Guard is non-binary and will also never be important or mentioned again, ever.
> 
> trigedasleng notes  
> "yu chich op" - you speak it?  
> lukotwar vs. ripawar - friend of war with connotations of respect, ripawar meaning "war-killer" with connotations of "we kill you for that kind of thing"
> 
> also, there's no official curfew in Arkadia. bellamy is just a Huge Jerk


	9. i owe you a favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy takes a shower and drinks some tea. Pike makes a plan, except not really. Dreaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's mentioned before, but in this story, the blockade is five miles out giving Arkadia a tiny bit of hunting ground.

He makes curfew just barely. Pike had kept him later than he needed to. He must have been the worst teacher, and honestly, with him, Murphy’s never sure if he’s the star student or he’s about to get detention.

He leaves the door open like Bellamy had dictated. He still hasn’t really decided how he’ll play Bellamy: befriend him? follow him, like a puppy or a soldier? antagonize him, make Pike choose between the two of them? He’s decided to follow Bellamy’s fucking curfew for now: in any case, it will make Bellamy reconsider his opinions on Murphy.

Also, there’s the whole “being trapped in a tiny room” thing that he’s not super thrilled about. Cages, confinement, etc,. He doesn’t think about that.

He’s still only got the one shirt and nothing to trade for more, so after he allows himself a good ten seconds of moral debate, he goes through Bellamy’s dresser drawers. The bottom two drawers in “his” dresser are full of somebody else’s clothes, but not Bellamy’s, he thinks. The other dresser is definitely full of Bellamy’s clothes; that’s the shirt he was wearing yesterday. He wonders if he’s the same size as Bellamy, if he could reasonably “borrow” these clothes. He shuts the drawer.

It should look like he’s doing something worthwhile when Bellamy comes back. He gets out his/Pike’s map and the pencils and stares at it until his eyes feel fuzzy.

Someone knocks on his threshold, to get his attention. It’s not Bellamy, come to check if he made curfew. It’s Dr. Griffin.

She doesn’t look like Clarke, except for her eyes, which pull at her face in the same tired way. “John,” she says. “Let me look at your wounds. I can give you something for the pain.”

She must know that he already refused medical treatment when he was in lockup. “Actually,” he says, and remembers his voice sucks. “All my visitors are screened by Bellamy. You’ll have to check in with him before you’re allowed to see me.” Come on. He needs to milk these bloodstains for another day or so and then he’ll take a shower, and he can deal with the pain. He always has in the past.

She’s coming in anyway. He can’t really do anything to stop her. “I can give you something for your voice,” she says, which feels more like a threat than a promise to him.

He coughs around another denial, but at this rate she’s not taking no for an answer. He considers giving in; considers her hands on his chest, checking for broken ribs, calling him _John_ , being gentle with him. It makes him sick. He’s trying to resign himself to the idea, and Bellamy, behind her, says “I think John has made it clear he doesn’t need your assistance, Dr. Griffin.”

Clarke’s mom turns around. “He was _tortured_ , Bellamy,” like Bellamy doesn’t already know. Bellamy shakes his head and pushes past her. She leaves. He tries not to make his sigh of relief too obvious.

Bellamy is doing whatever behind him. Murphy fights to keep his body still, not flinching. He’s cocky, he’s self-assured, he’s sassy. He’s not _damaged_. He can work. He’s _useful_.

”What are you doing?” asks Bellamy, apparently trying for comraderie.

He doesn’t have enough moisture in his throat for this. He coughs. The words don’t make it out of him. He coughs again. “Mapping.” A swallow, another cough. “Sorry. Been talking all day to Pike.”

“You should take something for your throat.”

“You want me to go to Medical?” Despite himself, he feels kind of hurt. “I’m not -- I’m not talking to Clarke’s mom.”

Bellamy takes a moment. “Go to Monty,” he says, like he’s offered this advice with Murphy’s comfort in mind. “Ask him to make you ginger tea.”

Resources. Can’t waste those on him. “I don’t have anything to trade for it.”

“Think of something,” says Bellamy, frustrated, wanting to be done with him. “Just go. You’re not going to be useful if you can’t talk.”

The keyword. Murphy’s half out of the door when he hears himself say, “You gonna let me back in, or do I need to find somewhere else to sleep tonight?”

“Just get back here before 22:00.”

That’s not going to happen. He gives a jerky nod, and he’s out.

\---

If Bellamy had told him to go to Medical, he would have fucked around for awhile and maybe actually taken a shower. But Bellamy gave him actual advice, and Murphy’s not sure what to do with that. The last time that happened, _due north_ , he got locked in a bunker for three months.

He finds himself in front of Monty’s door, despite himself. He knocks. Once. Twice. Three times.

Monty’s mom is the one that comes to the door. Hannah, he thinks. _Moms_. He’d done his best to avoid them, and they keep popping up. Just take it, he thinks. Just ride it out.

Except _talking to moms_ is not something he can just _ride out_. It’s not a beating that he can think about something else during. It’s not starvation. It’s not torture. Just suck it _up_ , Murphy, there’s no time for your dramatic shit.

“What do you want?” She’s a person, first, not a mom. Get it together, Murphy. He hasn’t even thought about how he wants to do this: play up his wounds and appeal to her sense of guilt? Or just say it straight and hope he gets away with only owing her a favor?

As it turns out, he can’t say it any way. He opens his mouth and only hoarseness comes out. He tries to form them into words, but it’s just breath. He can’t even whisper. They shouldn’t have wasted fake blood on him; the straleoseed is doing more damage than torture ever could.

Monty is at the door now. “Mom, why --” His gaze gets to Murphy. “Bellamy sent you?” he asks. Murphy nods. “Ginger tea?” he asks. He nods again. “Come on in.” Monty opens the door wider. He has to push past Hannah to get into their quarters.

It’s a family unit, which is very nice. He sits at the table. Monty busies himself with the appliances and the making of the legendary ginger tea. He can’t say anything, so he just sits and watches the two Greens. Monty gives him the tea in a large thermos. It tastes like mint and steam. It’s the only thing that hasn’t felt like sand going down his throat. It gives him enough breath back to say: “Thanks. I owe you a favor.” Let that be enough.

Monty doesn’t reply. “If I give you the ingredients, can you make more of this on your own?”

Murphy shakes his head. “I don’t have any water tokens,” he says.

Monty sighs. “I’ll get some more of this to you. You’re rooming with Bellamy?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t get why Monty is asking these questions.

“Cool. Take a hot shower, too; the steam will help your voice. You can take the rest of the tea back with you.”

“Thanks,” he repeats. “I owe you a favor.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” says Monty.

Right. Monty was rich before he got sent to the Skybox. “ _I owe you a favor,_ ” he insists.

“Fine, whatever.” snaps Monty. Murphy lets himself relax. He lets his eyes slide over to Monty’s mom. She’s got the same calculating look that Pike does. He hates it. Monty slides him two water tokens. “Go take a shower,” he says. “And get some rest.”

“Thanks,” says Murphy. He lets himself out.

\---

He lets himself take a shower. Nobody’s in the barracks showers at this hour, so he slides one token in for fifteen minutes. He turns the water up as hot as it will go. The steam does feel nice.

He asseses his injuries again: two healing, deeper cuts on his back that he can’t really reach anyway, numerous bruises -- and his wrists. His _wrists_. They’ve scabbed over, except where they’re open and still kind of bleeding. There’s nothing really to be done about that, unless he goes to Medical, which isn’t likely. It’s best to suck that one up.

He’s still got about five minutes left of water. He thinks about jacking off. The water verges into coldness. He’s got another token, and it’s past curfew anyway. He doesn’t have the energy.

He pockets the token.

\---

He’s still in the barracks, thinking about whether or not there’s a sofa he can sleep on. Walking past Bellamy’s room, the door’s still open. He steps into the threshold. Bellamy’s at the desk now, looking at the map Murphy had left there. “You still awake?” he asks.

Bellamy turns around. “Oh,” he says, and then. “You clean up nicely.”

Murphy snorts. “Thanks. I can sleep here?”

“Yeah,” says Bellamy. “Of course.”

Murphy sets the rest of the thermos on top of his dresser and climbs into his bunk. Bellamy turns the light out.

He’s asleep before he even turns over.

\---

In the middle of the night, Murphy wakes with a startle, a gasp, a huge intake of air. This in turn wakes Bellamy, a light sleeper by nature. He’s on the ladder before he realizes it, trying to see through the dark. “Murphy?” he hears himself say.

“Bellamy,” Murphy says, in his cool, even voice. “You gonna cuff me to the bed?”

“No.”

“Okay,” says Murphy, somehow calmer than before. He turns and goes back to sleep, for all appearances.

Bellamy gets off the ladder and tries to shake off his worry.

 

\---

After thirty minutes of searching, Pike finally finds a bug. He calls all of them in for a rehearsed meeting. His mom comes, of course. Bellamy’s there. Monty has been invited, as he always is. He feels Monroe’s absence like an ache. She’s already been replaced with Murphy, who is standing awkwardly to the side of Pike’s presentation board.

“Results of this morning’s mission inventory was sobering. In no way do we currently have the ammo for an extended series of firefights.” It turns out that the Ark hadn’t planned on wiping out all the Grounders. Figures. Monty doesn’t have anything against the Grounders, personally.

“So what’s Plan B?” But Bellamy? He would follow Bellamy to the ends of the earth.

“Sources --” his source is Murphy, _of course_ , “ -- say that the largest Grounder encampment is in this valley, so we deploy an assault team in Rover One, and we do as much damage as we can with automatic weapons.”

His mom cuts in - “They’ll just fall back and make a run for reinforcements.”

Pike nods. “I’m counting on that. The only way there and back is this ridge, so we can bottleneck their warriors and pick them off.”

“You have the firepower for that?” And Bellamy is following Pike; so, that’s where he’ll go for now.

“We won’t need it,” says Pike. “We already have a dozen concussive anit-personnel devices in our armory. We already have a weapons man rigging them with a remote trigger. We throw the APDs into the Rover and mine the field before we attack. After we strike, we lure their reinforcements onto the ridge, and once he have enough Grounders in the killing box --”

“We detonate.” Bellamy. Monty watches Murphy’s face, to gauge his reaction. He looks kind of like he wants to be sick, but he also always kind of looks like that. “It’ll buy us some time, but --”

“Time is what we need. We move at dawn.” They all turn their attention to the bug then, which Monty recognizes as Sinclair’s design. It’s all a ruse; there’s nobody working on a remote trigger, even though they do have the APDs. Maybe, if they had enough time, if they weren’t fighting an insurrection, if they weren’t at war. If Bellamy --

It’s a lot of maybes.

After the meeting gets out, Murphy corners him. He hands back the thermos that Monty had lent him last night. “Thanks,” he says. “And I really mean it. About the favor.”

“You don’t like owing people,” says Monty aloud, but wishes he hadn’t when Murphy scowls. “If something helps you survive, it’s always the right thing,” he tells Murphy, which is what his mom is always telling him.

“Whatever,” says Murphy, and stalks off.

At least his voice sounds much better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think! thanks for reading!
> 
> two scenes in this chapter I wrote in different characters' perspectives before deciding on a mostly-Murphy chapter. loathe as I am to discard any writing, you can now read them in the "sequel" to this fic, "IBG deleted scenes". yay? you can also follow illbegood1 on tumblr, where i literally just talk about the 100 and this fic.
> 
> also no pressure but I enjoy each and every one of your comments. blueparascom, you're the bomb.com
> 
> I've been updating at a pretty breakneck speed for the last couple of chapters, but I'll be slowing down as the 100 goes into hiatus and this fic quickly becomes "total AU" instead of predictions and/or fixits. thanks for reading!


	10. he thought he was done with teenage drama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even Evil People Can Be Dads  
> also, Murphy kisses a Hot Babe!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Why did you spend so long in the woods?” asks Pike, looking over his careful maps.
> 
> “There was a girl,” says Murphy, trying not to sound too dreamy.
> 
> \--  
> I keep waiting for this to come up naturally but it hasn't, so I'm telling you ahead of time: Bellamy used to room with Lincoln.

“So Monty is probably going to stop by with more tea,” says Murphy cautiously.

“Good,” says Bellamy absently. He’s getting ready to go to guard duty or whatever the heck.

“Octavia might also come over,” he adds, hoping Bellamy is sufficiently distracted that --

Bellamy turns to look at him straight-on. “You’re not allowed to talk to my sister,” he says. “Under any circumstances.”

“Okay,” he says.

Bellamy sighs. “Okay.” After a few seconds, he slides a couple more water tokens over to him. “Take these, and get another shower.”

\---

Here’s an irony for his consideration: when Murphy talks to Pike again, Pike asks him to infiltrate the insurrection. He gets it, kind of; he’s a wild card, a new element. They’re fighting over his loyalty because they assume he’s a blank slate. So he goes.

He finds the insurrection by following some well-placed graffiti. He doesn’t knock, and the door is unlocked. They’re all clustered around a table, arguing in low voices. He wonders if he should close his eyes, to prevent himself from identifying them later. “Sorry,” he says, because none of them have noticed him yet. Kane is on his feet almost instantly. “Pike sent me to infiltrate the insurrectionists, and this was stupidly easy -- anybody who got Skybox’d could find you.” He addresses his comments to Kane, not the other two. “I need to get a message to Octavia.”

“What kind of message?” asks Kane.

“Just ask her to stop by and see me,” he says. “And then somebody should punch me. I won’t identify any of you. I’ll tell Pike that my mission was a failure.”

“Whose side are you even _on_?” asks one of them. It sounds like Harper, or maybe Fox.

“Ask Octavia,” he replies, keeping his voice as cool as he can. “Hit me.”

The three of them have a short, hushed conversation, Kane probably insisting that they shouldn’t punch anybody, and then --

He gives up trying not to identify them. It’s Harper and Miller. He wonders where Fox is. She’d be a good match for this kind of gig. He won’t tell anybody, but he knows. Harper says “Hold him,” to Miller, and Miller takes both of his wrists.

Murphy struggles against Miller’s hold, but Miller doesn’t loosen until Murphy chokes out “Gimme a _second_.” Miller lets him go, watches him.

Murphy turns and punches the wall behind him; once, twice, thrice. He swears as he shakes out his hand, admires his knuckles. “Nobody can say I didn’t give as good as I got.” He meets Miller’s eyes, and gives a jerky nod.

Miller takes his arms again and holds him. Murphy keeps himself still, and quiet. Harper has a mean left hook. As Harper splits his lip, he wonders how he never noticed that Harper is left-handed. He takes a few more hits and then says “That’s probably enough.”

Miller loosens his hold enough for Murphy to shake free. “Thanks,” he says.

“Shut up, Murphy.” He shuts up.

He goes back to Pike and spits blood on his desk. “Turns out I’m not very trustworthy.” Pike scowls, and Murphy spends the next three hours on work detail for insubordination.

 _Worth it_ , he thinks.

\---

Monty comes by with a thermos of hot ginger tea. He knocks on Bellamy’s open doorway. “Hey,” Bellamy says. “Murphy’s not here.”

“Oh,” says Monty. “Can you give this to him? It should be drunk hot, or at least warm.”

“I’m sorry about Sinclair,” Bellamy says instead. He takes the thermos and sets it on Murphy’s dresser.

Monty is having trouble with words. “He just -- He recruited me into Engineering, and I just helped put him in jail.”

Bellamy doesn’t have anything to say to make Monty feel better. “He committed treason.”

“I know. I just -- yeah.”

”Yeah,” agrees Bellamy.

\---

Octavia does stop by, although Murphy is fairly sure Pike confined her to quarters. He props his foot up on Bellamy’s dresser and rolls up his pants to show her the sun tattoo. “Six months,” she says, apparently counting the beams. He’s hardly looked at the tattoo himself. “You think you can make it?”

“It has to be sooner,” he confesses to her. “I can’t -- I don’t know if I can keep this up for that long.”

“Yeah,” she says, like she gets it. “You know how you’re gonna take him out?”

“Poison,” he says. “And then I’ll slit his throat. And I don’t know how to prove to the Grounders that he’s dead, after.”

“They might take your word for it if you got out to them,” Octavia is musing. “But you’re right. That’s a tough one.”

“Yeah, I --”

Octavia stops him -- “Shhh.” Then she takes his face in her hands, and she’s kissing him, and she tastes like Emori, like the forest, and all he can think is: _I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night._

Bellamy’s hand is on his shoulder. Bellamy is shoving him onto the bottom bunk. Octavia has broken away from him. She’s yelling at Bellamy. Bellamy’s hand is on his chest, keeping him there. “Stay,” says Bellamy to him, and then he’s yelling with Octavia.

This is the worst thing he’s ever done. This is worse than hanging Bellamy. This is -- He needs to get out of here. _Stay._ He’s fucked up, he’s fucked up, he’s ducking underneath Bellamy and he’s out the door, sprinting down the corridor.

\---

He tries the insurrectionists first, but the place they met this morning is already abandoned, no trace of Miller or Harper or even Kane. He feels like he’s outside his body. He can’t control his breathing; it’s too fast, he didn’t even ask Octavia to get poison for him, he’s going to be stuck here forever --

He finds himself at Pike’s door. He should kill Pike now and get out of camp while he can. He should slit Pike’s throat while he doesn’t expect it. He can kill Pike and take the Rover and slam out of the gates and --

\---

Charles is sitting at his desk, looking over his plans when the boy Murphy comes in without knocking. Earlier today he’d spit blood on his desk, cocky and self-assured, but now he appears to be crying.

He remembers a young Clarke at his desk, crying to her favorite teacher about some boy she liked or a grade she got on a test or her mom. He’s not a teacher anymore, but he remembers the motions.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong? C’mere, sit down.” He sits on the sofa, patting the space beside him.

Murphy sits on the edge of his sofa. In between hiccuping breaths, he says “I kissed Octavia and Bellamy’s going to kill me.”

And he thought he was done with teenage drama. “Bellamy’s not going to kill you,” Charles says, trying not to sound patronizing.

“You don’t understand,” says the boy. “I’m a bad person, I’m fucked up, I don’t--”

”Shhh,” Charles says, reaching a tentative hand to rub circles on Murphy’s back. He trembles underneath the touch, and cries harder. Charles lets the boy cry himself out. He starts apologizing, nonsensically, and Charles cuts him off. “You know, I never had you in my class. Earth Skills didn’t seem useful to you?”

Murphy gives a shaky little laugh. “I got locked up too early,” he says.

“What for?” Charles asks, genuinely curious.

“Long story,” says Murphy, but at least he’s stopped crying. He’s holding his knife in his hand, loosely. Charles takes it from him, sets it on his desk, like he would a pair of glasses.

“You’re welcome to stay on my couch for the night, but you’ll have to face Bellamy eventually.”

“Thanks,” says the boy, not moving. Charles moves back to sit at his desk. Murphy keeps glancing at his knife. Charles moves it from his desk to his desk drawer. Maybe he doesn’t feel safe without it, but he’s not living in the woods now. The boy looks down at his hands, twists them together in his lap.

\---

“Why did you spend so long in the woods?” asks Pike, looking over his careful maps.

“There was a girl,” says Murphy, trying not to sound too dreamy. He wonders where Emori is now. Hopefully somewhere far away from here.

”Ah,” says Pike. Pike took his fucking knife for no reason. He needs to ask for it back. He can’t let Pike think he’s weak. Like the crying hasn’t already done it.

Or he should present himself as weak, in need of a father figure. Pike’s a teacher, he can do that, right? Play him like Bellamy played Kane. Except he’ll go through with the endgame. He’ll actually kill Pike. He’s staring at his hands. There was blood caked undeneath his nails, but it washed out during his shower. He scratches at the scabs on his wrists. He should stay here overnight, get his knife back. No. He can get a knife from anywhere. He can steal one from Bellamy.

_Bellamy’s going to kill him._

There’s a knock at the door. “Come in,” says Pike.

The knocker comes in. “Sir,” says Bellamy. “John Murphy is missing. He should be considered armed and dangerous --”

Murphy snorts.

Bellamy turns to see him sitting on the couch. Murphy stands, cracks his neck. If he’s going to get hit, he might as well do it now, and he might as well fight back. He _feels_ dangerous, like he could ignite the darkness inside of him. He doesn’t feel very armed. He’s about to say something very challenging and very offensive when Bellamy interrupts him.

“You’re bleeding,” says Bellamy.

“What?”

“Your wrists,” he says.

“Oh,” says Murphy, looking down at them again. “Yeah.” Of course. Bellamy remembers cuffing him in lockup. He’ll feel -- if not guilty, then responsible -- for his wrists.

“C’mon,” says Bellamy, jerking his head. “I’ll take you to Medical.”

Murphy feels the flinch. Bellamy watches it. Pike says “Mr. Blake, do you intend to kill Mr. Murphy?”

”Nosir,” says Bellamy.

Pike is standing. He gives Murphy back his knife, ceremonial. “If that doesn’t hold up to be true, you kill him right back, you hear?”

Murphy almost smiles. “Sure thing.”

\----

When they’re out of Pike’s office, Bellamy sets an arm on Murphy’s shoulder to comfort? to restrain? him.. Murphy shrugs him off. Bellamy lets him. “Sorry for yelling,” he says. “Octavia says you’re only into boys, anyway.”

“We were friends in the Skybox,” he says. “I just wanted to talk to her. She kissed me. I would never --”

“Yeah,” says Bellamy, and then, again, “Sorry.”

“I’m not going to Medical,” snarls Murphy. “I’m not talking to Clarke’s mom.”

“You know other people work in Medical, right?” Bellamy’s stopped walking now, has turned Murphy so that they can talk face-to-face. “Dr. Griffin has probably already gone to bed. I’ll take you to Jackson.”

Murphy deflates. “That’s fine,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

He slaps Murphy on the back, like they’re friends. “Good man,” he’s saying, except Murphy goes down _hard_ , his knees hitting the cement, his hands not moving to break the fall.

“Sorry,” says Murphy after a beat, standing himself back up.

He would do well to remember that he’s been no friend to Murphy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god remember being a teenager? it was literally The Worst. @teenagers, It Gets Better (really).
> 
> you: i thought you were going to stop updating at a breakneck pace  
> me: IT'S BEEN TWO WHOLE DAYS
> 
> next chapter: murphy fights everyone
> 
> in the meantime: leave me a comment! tell me how you feel about pike! spoilers: he is going to die (probably). or talk to me on the tumblrs at icetastrophe! thanks for reading!


	11. i did what i had to do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy and Bellamy talk. Harper is also in this chapter. Also some exposition for good measure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is pretty short and I am sorry, but it was either put this out and actually work on the next chapter or worry about it for the next ten years

In Medical, he zones out while Jackson takes hold of his wrists. He’s so _tired_ , and honestly? Jackson is quick, professional, and doesn’t even try to mom him. He does say that he’s likely to have “a significant amount of scarring”, which, whatever. Emori would probably think that’s cool. Jackson wraps his wrists in gauze and tells him to keep taking Monty’s ginger tea.

He feels like he’s asleep but somehow still walking. When he gets back to the barracks, he doesn’t even snap at Bellamy, just climbs into the top bunk with his shoes still on.

When he wakes up, his boots are lined up neatly by his dresser.

\---

He’s relieved to note that none of the graffiti that led him to the insurrectionists still exists the following day.

“So what are you?” asks Harper in the mess hall.

 _Fucked_ , he thinks as he watches her slide into the sea across from him. “You can’t be here,” he tells them, directing his voice into his food. “You can’t talk to me.”

“Yeah?” says Harper, her voice dropping to an undertone. “Octavia wouldn’t tell us anything. I think you owe us some answers.”

“I don’t owe you _shit_ , Harper,” he snarls. Is he going to have to fight her, right here? He’ll definitely do it, but she’s gonna take him down easy. He’s still aching from yesterday. “And I’m definitely not going to tell you anything _here._ ” Could he use Harper as an ally? He doesn’t know if he trusts her. He would trust Fox. Fox liked Harper. “If you can get me Fox, I’ll talk to her.”

Harper slides her eyes over him.“Fox is dead, Murphy,” she says.

Oh. _Fuck_. “I’m not going to tell you anything.” he repeats.

Harper sizes him up. “Okay,” she says.

Murphy takes his tray elsewhere. He’ll deal with the problem of Harper later.

He’ll deal with Fox’s death never.

\---

There’s only so much mapping he can do for Pike. Pike has started talking about him leading a mission past the blockade, about him setting the bombs for the Grounders and blowing them up from a distance. But that’s really all there is to it: talk. Pike just doesn’t want to die.

He starts taking work detail just so he’ll have tokens for the mess hall. He _cannot believe_ that ninety-percent of the Ark didn’t survive, but thousands of these grubby little tokens did, and they’re _still being used_. Here on the ground, their value changes more suddenly: what got him fifteen minutes of water two days ago now gets him five, and it takes him six tokens just to get a decent meal, but now that he’s started looking healthier and less dead Pike has stopped giving him much for his knowledge.

Anyhow, all that it means is that he drops off work detail early to make it back in time for Bellamy’s stupid fucking curfew. He’s exhausted when he returns, and honestly he thinks he might just go to bed. Bellamy is already there, at the desk. “You’re late,” says Bellamy.

He’s correct. It’s 20:10. “Fuck off,” Murphy tells him, as good-natured as he can manage. “We both know your curfew is bullshit.” He sits on Bellamy’s bunk to unlace his boots.

Bellamy watches him as he strips off his shirt and climbs into his bunk. _Liking the view?_ he doesn’t say. Instead he says “What happened at Mount Weather?”

“Mm,” says Bellamy. “When did you leave for the City of Light?”

“The Grounders had made peace with us,” he says. “We were training together to storm the mountain. Then I got into a fight, and --” Jaha happened. “And then I left.”

Bellamy considers that information. “I got in successfully to Mount Weather, but Lexa betrayed us to Cage -- that was the president of Mount Weather. A rescue party that had gone in earlier was captured, including Kane and Dr. Griffin.” He pauses; it’s possible that the memory is painful for him. “We opened the ventilation systems to let fresh air in, irradiated air. Me, Monty, and Clarke. We killed everyone in Mount Weather -- the residents, I mean. There were -- They died from the radiation. That’s why they call Clarke _Wanheda_ , the Commander of Death. She killed hundreds of people in Mount Weather.”

“You killed them too,” says Murphy.

Bellamy winces. “I did what I had to do.”

“Yeah,” says Murphy, thinking about Pike’s blood on his hands, about his tattoo, about Prosper. Awkwardly, he adds, “Good night.”

“Oh yeah,” Bellamy says, snapping out of his sob story. “Harper stops by. She said she’s challenging you to a fight?”

Harper can’t possible want to _brawl_ with him here. “Uh,” he says.

“You know what that means?” asks Bellamy.

“Uh,” says Murphy again. “It’s a Skybox thing. You wouldn’t get it.”

“Okay,” says Bellamy, bemused. “Good night, then.”

“Good night,” says Murphy for the third time, and burrows his way beneath the covers.

He’s never had trouble falling asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here was my outline for this chapter:  
> [BELLAMY SCENE]  
> murphy: so what happened in mount weather  
> bellamy: i was a trojan horse  
> murphy: oh so clarke has exactly one trick
> 
> my breakneck speed is definitely over, though. please expect an update every four days instead of every two or one.
> 
> as always, your comments mean the world to me. you can also talk to me at icetastrophe.tumblr.com! thanks for reading!


	12. concrete/knees/hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monty fights Murphy. Raven fights Murphy! Bellamy laughs. A titledrop!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the chapter titles again because I don't know Roman numerals past 4
> 
> also I stole them from The Delinquents, a great 100 fanfiction all of you should read right now

Bellamy leaves his radio behind in the barracks. Murphy finds this out because he steps on it. If he was still barefoot, it would be fine, but of course he’s already pulled on his boots. He swears softly, and then gathers up the pieces. He takes them to Mechanical.

Raven is there. She’s fixed radios before, right? On the dropship, maybe? He’s not super clear on the details. “Hey,” he says to her.

She looks up from her work. Her face doesn’t so much soften when she sees him as it’s already soft, like she’s completely unguarded. “Hey,” she says. “You’re Murphy, right?”

He stares at her. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re Raven, right?”

She smiles, and it’s this huge, happy smile, and it chills him. “You looking for someone else?” she asks.

“I fucked up this radio,” he admits. “I thought maybe you could fix it.” He spills the pieces onto her table.

“Sure,” she says. “No problem.”

He supposes it’s good that she’s happy, but -- she doesn’t even recognize him.

\---

Monty is holed up in Mechanical, trying to reroute the parabolic magnet assembly on his recovered radio when Murphy shows up. “What’s up with her?” he asks, jerking his head towards Raven.

“City of Light,” he says.

“That’s creepy as shit,” Murphy mutters. “Wait, does that mean Jaha is here? Like, _in_ Arkadia?”

“Yeah,” says Monty. “You got a problem with that?”

Murphy stops, and takes a deep breath. “You know how, like, time passed from the last time we talked?”

“Yeah,” says Monty. “I was trapped in a mountain with people who tried to kill me for my bone marrow.”

“Right,” says Murphy, waving him off. “Well, during some of that time, I was getting tortured by Grounders, you know, typical shit. But for three months, Jaha locked me in an underground lighthouse while he fucked around and meditated in the City of Whatever. I have to go punch him in the face. Right now.”

Behind him, Raven is talking to someone who isn’t there. Monty shakes his head. “Good luck with that.”

Murphy is almost gone when he sticks his head back in the door. “Also, Harper challenged me to a fight, I guess? Uh, I’m really out of practice, would you consider training with me?”

Monty glances up at Murphy. Are they becoming -- _friends_? He feels a little unbalanced. “I thought you were the one that owed me a favor.”

Murphy scowls. “I’m just _asking_.”

Monty almost laughs. Murphy’s kind of cute when he scowls. “Sure,” he says. “I’d train with you.”

Murphy flashes him a quick, tight smile. “Thanks,” he says, and he’s gone.

\---

Monty meets him in the training room, which is apparently perpetually unused since Bellamy joined with Pike and Lincoln was put in lockup.

“I can only get you so far,” Monty is saying. “I know theory, not practicality.”

“Okay,” says Murphy.

Then Monty honest-to-God _pulls out a notebook_. “First,” he says, reading from the page. “you should avoid a fight if at all possible. Try to deescalate the situation before it comes to blows! Speak calmly and quietly to the person you’re fighting with and avoid threatening or cocky language.”

“Fight me,” snaps Murphy, impatient.

Monty takes ahold of Murphy’s hands, presses deft fingers to the bruises still burning there. Murphy hisses, but Monty keeps his grip steady. “You need to make a fist correctly,” he says. “When people injure their fists while throwing a punch, it’s typically because they’re hitting with the wrong part of the hand. The knuckles that should strike your target are the middle knuckles on your hand, between your index and middle finger. Did you actually find Jaha?”

“Naw,” says Murphy, the truth bleeding out of him. “I punched a wall a couple times.” He tugs his hands out of Monty’s grip. The gauze slips down enough to show the scarring, and he hears himself hiss again. Fuck. He picked Monty to train with because Monty’s never hurt him, so he has nothing to feel guilty about, but if Monty sees that he’s _damaged_ \--

Monty carefully unwraps the gauze at his wrist, then rewraps it tighter. “You want me to do the other one?”

Murphy surrenders his wrist wordlessly, watches as Monty unwraps and rewraps. When he’s done, he keeps holding on to Murphy, his thumb pressed over the back of Murphy’s palm.

Murphy’s hands feel warm. His face feels kind of warm, too. The silence stretches out between them.

He shoves himself away from Monty. “You gonna hit me or not?” he asks, his voice rough.

Monty kind of smiles. “Sure. You wanna go?”

They’re no match. Monty’s actually trained within the last six months, whereas Murphy has spent the past six weeks primarily getting tortured and starving. He’s built up enough tolerance to get through work detail, but this is beyond him. He collapses after their last bout, bruising and kind of low-key terrified. He’s got the spark of adrenaline thrumming underneath his skin, but his bones can’t hold him up.

Monty crouches down next to him. “You’re good,” he says.

Murphy lets out a little huff worth of laughter. It sounds more bitter than he means it to.

“No, really,” says Monty. “You just need stamina.”

“I don’t just need _stamina_ ,” he scoffs. “I need to be _better than Harper_.”

“Yeah? What’s the bet? What happens if you lose?”

 _I’d have to tell her. I’d have to pick through the lies and decide what information is believable enough while keeping myself safe._ He shrugs. “Eternal humiliation, probably. Maybe she just wants to fight. I don’t know. I asked about Fox, and I guess that hit a nerve.”

Monty winces. “Yeah. She and Fox got -- kind of close, in Mount Weather.”

Of course they did. “I didn’t know.”

Monty shrugs. They sit like that for awhile, Murphy still panting shallowly, Monty cool like a cucumber. “What if I asked someone else to train with you?” he asks, after a long while.

“You getting sick of me already?” _Typical._

“It’s just -- Miller is better than me. He can -- actually help.”

Miller’s arm around his shoulder, holding him steady. Yeah. He bets Miller can actually help. “Sure,” he hears himself say. “If you can get him to come.”

Monty’s hand is across his shoulders, a reassurance. Murphy doesn’t flinch. It’s not even that hard.

\---

At 21:00 that night, Raven shows up at Bellamy and Murphy’s door. She looks... worse. “Are you okay?” asks Bellamy from behind him. “You look... better.”

Raven gives him one of her stunning smiles. “Thanks!” she says to him, and then cuts her eyes to Murphy. “You shot me, didn’t you?” she asks.

Does she -- _not remember_? Christ. “Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t try to defend himself.

“I fixed your radio,” she says, and hands him Bellamy’s formerly-busted radio. He hands it back to Bellamy. “Also,” she says, gracing her face with another wicked-huge grin: “ _fuck you_.” She socks him straight in the solar plexus.

He can’t breathe, and he goes down hard, concrete/knees/hands bunching up together in his brain. He hears Bellamy laugh as he pulls himself towards the wall, coughing.

“I deserved that,” he admits when he can talk again, although Raven is long gone by then.

“You did,” agrees Bellamy, grinning. “You need help up?”

“I’m good,” Murphy says, warding Bellamy off with a hand. At Bellamy’s spark of a laugh, he revises his statement: “I’ll be good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that nobody on the Ark knows who or what Jesus Christ is because apparently they don't have religion(?!), but no swear sounds as good as "christ" with the added thrill of blasphemy. sorry about the unrealistic bit of that. also every time someone says "good" in this fic, my fingers twitch and there's another titledrop. 
> 
> monty is reading directly from the wikihow page "how to be good at fist fighting", by the way. thank you, wikihow. what would we do without you
> 
> if you were awake for the twenty minutes this chapter was posted this morning at about 5am, I am very sorry. it's back up now though!
> 
> next time: Murphy joins Fight Club
> 
> want to talk to me about what a terrible movie Fight Club is, or how great you think this chapter was? leave a comment, or talk to me on tumblr at icetastrophe.tumblr.com! my askbox is even open now. your comments are what keep this lightning pace alive


	13. you know how you owe me a favor?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy fights everyone and is very bad at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the outline for this chapter was 1087 words

Murphy wakes exhausted. Usually, his aches settle into the back of his mind, and he works through them, but this morning it’s like he’s ceased to be made of muscle and instead made of pain.

His throat’s fucked up again as well. He stumbles through the dark, searching for Monty’s ginger tea. Monty must be slipping some kind of pain reliever into the tea. Murphy knows he’s not worth it, but Monty’s already been arrested once for drug possession; Monty can make his own goddamn choices. Bellamy’s stirring now, so Murphy flips on the light.

His thermos is on his dresser, where he usually keeps it. Obviously. He tips the thermos back: one, two, three swallows. It’s long gone cold by now. It tastes more like mint than it does of ginger; mint and honey. He leans back against his dresser and waits for the pain to subside. He tips the thermos again. He’s out. _Shit._ He’s training with Miller today, and before that, work detail.

Suck it up, Murphy. Bellamy, awake now, catches his eye. “Something wrong?”

Murphy lets out a breath. “Shit’s fucked,” he says, his voice coming out like gravel. He coughs through the pain. It clears a little.

“Anything I can do to help?” asks Bellamy, his eyes raking over Murphy’s bare chest.

 _You can fuck me up_ , he thinks. _Bellamy’s mouth on his, Bellamy’s warm heat on his throat, Bellamy’s nails digging into his shoulders._ Wow, Murphy, still kinda early for that. He shakes his head. Actually -- “Can you get me off work detail?”

Bellamy puts on a shirt. “You just trying to get a meal?”

“Yeah.”

“I always forget you weren’t assigned a job after you got here,” says Bellamy aloud, pulling on his uniform. “If you wanna tag along with me today, I can see about getting you a more permanent assignment.”

Tag along. Like he used to do back at the dropship before he fucked up. He won’t be sticking around long enough to settle into a permanent assignment. He follows Bellamy.

\---

Bellamy knows him well enough now to stay out of range of Murphy, avoiding the flinches. He’s flipping through papers in Pike’s office. Pike isn’t here.

Murphy pretends boredom, starts messing with Pike’s desk. There’s nothing in here he can use. He doesn’t know if he’ll be getting a topically applied poison, or something he has to sneak into Pike’s food. Is he gonna contaminate Pike’s water supply? Pike does have a sink in his office, a fancy one he doesn’t even need tokens for. But what are the chances he poisons someone else who’s just trying to get a drink instead? Pretty high.

He takes advantage of the sink, washing his hands and face. He swapped his last two water tokens for meal tokens, so he fills the thermos he’s still carrying around as well. “Stop that,” Bellamy says about his illegal water-gathering. He waves him over to look at papers with him. “You good at anything?”

”Not really,” Murphy says honestly.

Bellamy scowls. “Where’d you work before you got arrested?”

“Didn’t.”

Bellamy frowns, like Murphy is purposefully withholding information. (He is.) “When’d you get locked up?”

Six months before he would turn fourteen and pick a career path. “Early.”

Bellamy takes a threatening step towards him, or maybe a friendly step, it doesn’t really matter. He feels his whole body flinch, body goes tense, waiting for it to get worse. Bellamy swears and backs off. Murphy doesn’t know if Bellamy feels pity for him, or if he’s just an inconvenience. “Look. I’m a jack of all trades,” he’s pleading. “I can do most anything. Set me on watch, on guard duty - you know I’m good at that. I just don’t have enough stamina to do work detail for two shifts every day.” His voice goes reedy towards the end, lending credence to his story.

Bellamy’s still frowning, but at least he’s frowning at his papers now. Then he’s shoving an Arkadia guard jacket at him and telling Murphy to keep following him.

Guard duty with Bellamy. He’s good with a gun, with a sniper rifle. It’s the first time someone’s handed him a gun since he got back. He doesn’t even need poison now, just a couple bullets. Pike comes in, glances at both of them, doesn't pay attention.

Murphy slings the gun over his shoulder. He doesn’t have an exit plan. He follows Bellamy.

\---

Guard duty with Bellamy is mostly patrolling the wall. As it turns out, there is still a blockade of Grounders five miles out. Wow. What a surprise. At one point, Bellamy apparently has a shift on the gate, which consists of him actually operating the opening and closing of Arkadia’s gate for hunting and scouting parties while Murphy sits by the window, trying not to think about being trapped in a tiny room with Bellamy.

At 16:00, a half hour before second shift is set to begin, Bellamy drops three meal tokens into Murphy’s outstretched palm. He tells Murphy to go eat some food and then report to him for the start of second shift.

“Can’t,” says Murphy. He’s got a fight with Miller that starts in ten minutes.

“Why the hell not?”

”Got a meeting with Pike.”

“No you don’t.”

“I got _other shit_ to do, Bellamy, jesus. You want me on first watch tomorrow, or was this a one-time deal?”

Bellamy’s frown deepens. “Report to me when you’re done with _whatever_ and I’ll see about getting you on the guard roster.”

Murphy is solidly surprised that he didn’t just get hung for his insolence. At least he’s still well-hung. Shut up, Murphy. “Sure,” he says. “Thanks.”

\--

Murphy fights like he’s seconds away from death. His game is all aggression, no defense, but as soon as Miller gets a shot in, he drops all pretense of knowing how to fight and lets himself get hit until Monty calls it off. Miller watches as Monty coaxes Murphy into drinking water, as Monty puts reassuring hands on Murphy’s shoulders.

Miller feels a tiny stab of jealousy. He brushes it aside.

“You were fine fighting me, yesterday,” Monty is saying to Murphy. It’s not really a question. Murphy mumbles out an answer anyway. “What?”

Murphy repeats himself, louder, but he directs his answer to Miller. “Monty’s not really a threat,” he says.

Their eyes meet. Miller remembers Murphy when he arrived in Arkadia; covered in his own blood and filth. Murphy’s wrists in his hand, struggling.

“So you’re scared submissive,” says someone behind Miller. “That’s fine; you’ll have to put some work in, but we can fix that.”

It’s Bryan. Miller blinks. He’s leaning against the wall of the training room, but when they all turn to look at him, he pushes himself off the wall to stand by Miller. Bryan rakes his eyes down Miller’s body. Miller has felt the rift growing between them for weeks now. Bryan speaks to him in an undertone: “Didn’t know you were taking in strays now.”

“It’s a favor for Monty,” Miller replies, matching his volume.

“Ah,” says Bryan. “A favor for Monty.” And there’s something in his voice -- something Miller knows he should work into, examine more thoroughly, but they’re _here_ , in front of Monty and Murphy, and he doesn’t.

He steps back. He lets Bryan take over.

\---

Murphy leaves the training room exhausted and giddy with excitement. Their last bout had been _good_ \-- Murphy had gotten a few great hits in before Bryan took him down.

He’s trying to tell Monty about it: he sounds, even to himself, like an overexcited child, except he’s coughing and panting through his words, and the terror/adrenaline is still pulsing through his hands, his stomach. His face feels hot. He might be flushed. He’s on the tipping point between hysteria and exhaustion, and he’s falling towards hysteria. Monty’s at his door now; Murphy follows him into his apartment without being invited. Monty shoves him onto the couch. Murphy lets his knees buckle, collapses onto it. Monty takes Murphy’s thermos that he’s been clutching onto.

Murphy can hear himself still talking. Monty’s hand is on his face. Murphy shuts up. Both of Monty’s hands are on his face, tilting him upwards. Murphy doesn’t understand: is he checking for a fever? He feels fine. He feels _really good_ , actually. “You know how you owe me a favor?” Monty asks him.

“Yeah,” says Murphy.

“I’m cashing it in,” says Monty, which doesn’t make _sense_ , except then Monty’s mouth is on his, kissing him hungrily. He’s lying down, so Monty’s weight is on top of him, pressing down -- and this is kind of nice, actually, Monty’s warmth against his. Monty is wearing some kind of weird half button-up shirt, and Murphy works at the buttons for a few seconds before sliding his hands from Monty’s waist to underneath his shirt. Monty makes an appreciative noise -- _warmth, warmth, **warmth**_ \-- Monty’s stomach, Monty’s collarbone -- the fabric of the shirt is stretching. Monty rolls upward and takes off his shirt. Monty smiles at him. Murphy can’t think of a reason not to smile back; the knife-smile he borrowed from Prosper.

Monty’s hands are sliding up his shirt now, and he can’t -- That’s too much. He’s sitting up now. Coughing again. Nope, retching. Is he going to throw up? Probably not. His loose warmth from before is gone: everything feels cold and very sharp now, in focus. “I can’t do this,” he hears himself saying to Monty. “Sorry -- I just --”

Monty is saying something to him, but it’s like his words are blurring. He’s got a comforting hand on Murphy’s shoulder. He should -- he should make Monty feel better. Monty is trying to rub his back.

He doesn’t want to be touched. Can he suck it up and let Monty feel useful? _No_. He stands up, takes a couple steps away. He needs to make Monty feel better. “I like you,” he says, which isn’t necessarily untrue. “I just _can’t_ \-- right now.”

Monty’s looking at him now, and his face is all pity. “You’ve been through a lot of trauma.” Also not untrue. Let Monty think whatever he wants. “We can work on it,” he says. “We can work around it.”

Murphy doesn’t know if he wants that. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going to go now, though, if that’s okay.”

“Wait until your tea is done,” Monty suggests.

“Sorry,” Murphy says again, and bolts.

He’s fucked up.

And now Monty knows.

\---

Murphy goes straight back to the barracks, to the room he shares with Bellamy. He takes off his boots, closes the door, shuts off the light. He climbs into bed. He’s exhausted and confused and he just wants to go to sleep.

He’s too tired to sleep. His body aches but his mind’s still alive. He tries playing through his favorite fantasies again: strangling Bellamy, gutting Clarke, wrecking Jaha. They don’t bring him any comfort. He still feels kind of sick. Everything’s so much more _complicated_ than it was then; he doesn’t want revenge. He doesn’t know what he does want, but it probably isn’t revenge.

After a length of time, Bellamy comes in and turns on the light. Murphy groans. Bellamy comes up to the side of Murphy’s bed. “You never reported in,” he says. “Are you okay?”

Murphy groans again. Bellamy frowns and reaches across to feel his forehead for a fever.

“Don’t _touch_ me,” Murphy finally snarls, and sits up so he can actually see Bellamy.

“What happened?” asks Bellamy.

“Monty kissed me,” he says.

“I see,” says Bellamy, and his brow furrows. “Did you want to kiss Monty?”

“I like kissing Monty,” he says. Why the fuck is he telling Bellamy any of this? “I just don’t know if I like Monty.”

“Oh,” says Bellamy. “I meant -” He gestures at Murphy’s face.

Murphy touches his newly split lip. Just as it had started to heal, too. He’ll have to remind Bryan to stay away from the face. Miller, too, now that he thinks about it. “Unrelated,” he explains.

”Oh,” says Bellamy. “Okay.”

There’s a knock at the door. Bellamy opens it. 

“Murphy’s not here,” says Bellamy. Murphy feels a sudden swell of appreciation for him.

“Oh,” says Monty. Then he and Bellamy talk about something radio-related, and he’s almost caught into sleep when Bellamy is touching him again.

Murphy hears himself snarl. “Sorry,” says Bellamy, clearly not sorry. “Monty stopped by with your ginger tea. You’ve got first shift patrol with me tomorrow and into next week. You can use second shift how you like.”

“Thanks,” he says, and then he really is asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's your daily reminder that Murphy is asexual
> 
> hold on to your seatbelts, kids. things are about to Get Serious.
> 
> as always: your comments mean Literally Everything to me. the end of this fic looms, as does the horizon of 3x09  
> see you on the flipside! thanks for reading!
> 
> edit: don't hold onto your seatbelts in a car that's actually quite dangerous. hold onto the little handle thing above your head.


	14. i'm literally blind in that eye, murphy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy asks Monty for another favor. Bellamy comes to fight club.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i am here to wreck your dreams
> 
> this chapter brought to you by a splitting headache and a lot of diet coke
> 
> also, as an author's note, every original character in this fic (besides Prosper and Moss) is named after an American Girl Doll

His life settles into kind of a rhythm after that: guard duty or patrolling with Bellamy in the morning, training with Miller and Bryan and Monty in the afternoon. More people are showing up to the training room now, ostensibly because they want to see what all the fuss is about but more likely because they’re interested in punching Murphy in the face. He’s been told he has a very punchable face.

It’s -- he’s getting better. He splits them up into groups of two and three, gets Miller to teach them, Monty to referee between them. He’s still mostly working one-on-one with Bryan, who knows how to coax him out of _fuck they’re going to kill me_ and into _I should hit them back_. And like -- Bryan gets it, Bryan knows how not to treat him like a scared animal or like fragile glass. Murphy doesn’t know how he got this ability, and frankly he doesn’t care, as long as it benefits him. It also probably helps that Bryan was never on the dropship, doesn’t really know about him from before Arkadia.

He’s watching Kathleen’s fight with Emily when Harper comes in. He can see her out of the corner of his eye, and he tells Emily she needs to watch her blind spot better. She says “I’m literally blind in that eye, Murphy.” Kathleen laughs.

“Do it better!” he yells as he’s walking away, and Kathleen keeps laughing but guides Emily’s hand to where she needs to hit harder. They’ll be fine.

When he reaches Harper, she’s got her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt. “You started this?” she asks, and she nods towards the assemblage of fists.

“Yeah,” he says, embarrassed. “Kind of, I guess.”

“Can I join?” she asks.

“I don’t know, are you calling our brawl off?”

Her face hardens then, although he can’t imagine how it was any softer before. “If you tell me what I want to know.”

She’s just going to keep _asking_ , and there’s no way he can fight her, not even with the progress he’s made. He could use an ally that could actually do something in Arkadia. He should -- He glances at Bryan.

Bryan will be fine. So will the rest of them. “I’ll tell you. But not here.”

\---

He’s worrying the skin between his thumb and forefinger. “I was in Polis for awhile, and Clarke is there too, and -- Clarke gave me a mission. I have a job to do, here in Arkadia, and if I complete it, the Grounders will lift their blockade and there will be peace.”

“Yeah?” says Harper. Her voice is coated with something -- disbelief? Jealousy? He doesn’t know.

“You can ask Octavia if you don’t believe me. I can’t tell you what the mission is. It’s -- not for the benefit of Pike.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll ask Octavia.” She smiles at him, and it’s this tight, haggard smile, and it reminds him of Clarke, of Dr. Griffin. It’s not pleasant. “If you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you, yeah?”

“Okay.” He swallows the fear he’s been holding onto.

“So can I join your fight club?” she asks, and the smile’s getting easier now, getting along with her face better.

“Sure,” he says. “Invite your friends.”

\---

Murphy knocks on his door sometime after second shift. “Hey,” he says. “Can we talk?”

Monty nods to the chair across from him. Murphy sits down. His face is bruised again: Monty thinks about Murphy’s recent fights, about how he should have done better. He doesn’t say anything.

He remembers Murphy’s wrists under his hands, his pulse jumping erratically. Murphy’s breath on his neck. Murphy, coming back to camp after being tortured by Grounders: _they are vicious / cruel_. The raised scars.

He doesn’t feel -- pity, exactly, but -- sympathy, maybe. “What do you want to talk about?” he asks.

“Listen, I like you. I just -- can’t right now,” he’s saying.

“When would be a better time?”

“I just -- I have to do something. Listen,” he says, and his voice is getting lower, sharing a secret. “I have to do something else, and I might get put in lockup for awhile. I want you to promise me something.”

 _I might get put in lockup for awhile_? What are you planning, John Murphy? Does he care? Does he _actually care_ about Murphy, beyond the curve of his jaw, his nimble fingers? He's not sure. “What do you want?”

“I want you to promise to kill me.”

Monty’s shoving himself away from the table. “No.”

“Come on --” Like it’s something he will negotiate on.

“I’m not going to talk about this with you. You can leave.”

A muscle jumps in Murphy’s jaw, but his eyes linger on Monty. “I really am -- sorry.”

Monty shakes his head. He doesn’t want to hear it.

\---

They’re in the training room. Murphy is getting better. It’s nice, for once, to teach someone else. It’s nice to have a partner other than Nate. It’s nice to co-teach with Nate, tutoring the delinquents in hand-to-hand combat. It’s one of the only things they can agree on together.

It’s nice. It’s a little challenging. It keeps him alive, anyway.

Murphy goes down easy -- too easy -- because he’s back up in seconds instead of staying down, lunging for Bryan -- Bryan catches the punch easy, uses that weight to toss him again. Murphy screams.

Bryan drops his arm, backs off. Murphy doesn’t immediately recover, like usual: he scrambles away from him, limbs skittish. “Breja,” he says, which isn’t a word Bryan knows, and then again: “ _Breja_ ,” over and over. His eyes are open, but they don’t catch on Bryan’s. Kathleen is by his shoulder now, and he remembers her careful work on a Grounder dictionary.

“Breja,” she says. “It’s Grounder for _mercy_ , or _please_.”

Monty rushes forward, but Bryan catches him by the collar. “Don’t.”

He thinks of his mother, scarred by Grounder blades, of his father’s hands not quite touching her shoulders. He thinks of both of them finding solace in Mount Weather. He hopes they have solace now.

To Monty: “Can you get a glass of water? Or -- his thermos, yeah?” When the thermos is in his hands, he crouches to Murphy, still on the floor, still glassy-eyed. “Hey,” he says, and then, “Heyheyhey,” but Murphy won’t look at him, won’t look up. He looks up to the assembled crowd. “There’s nothing to see here,” he tells them. They mutter amongst themselves, disband, go back to fighting. There’s some good left in the world after all.

He presses the thermos into Murphy’s still hands. Murphy gives a hiccuping, startled breath, and then latches onto it. “You’re here in the training room in Arkadia,” Bryan tells him, keeping his voice low, even. “You’re holding onto your thermos. It’s filled with water, or maybe tea. You’re on the ground because I threw you; we were fight-- we were training together. Monty’s here, Nate -- Miller’s here, I’m here -- none of us want to hurt you.” Murphy’s eyes meet Bryan’s, and he gives a shaky nod. Bryan breathes a sigh of relief.

\---

It’s going well. Everything’s going well. The time is ticking down on his tattoo and he’s made no progress, but he’s waiting on Octavia. He’s got no plan, but he has allies in Harper and in her insurrectionists, he has an ally in Monty -- maybe -- and Pike trusts him. Kind of. Probably.

And then Bellamy comes waltzing into the training room. Like he owns the place. Murphy supposes he kind of does: he ran hand-to-hand combat lessons before Murphy ever got ahold of it. He stands in the front of the room and says “Okay, today we’ll be --” like he never fucking left, like he didn’t imprison his fellow teacher in lockup, like he meant to continue what he started instead of abandoning it without a second thought.

Everyone’s already broken off into groups and has started working on Miller’s whatever. “Today we’ll be learning how to grapple,” Bellamy’s saying.

The delinquents mutter among themselves. Someone shouts, “We learned that last week,” and then another rumble goes through them, dissatisfaction, irritation at Bellamy leaving them, at Bellamy’s betrayal at all.

It’s Miller who clasps Bellamy on the back and says “Yeah, this is Murphy’s show now.” He juts his chin out towards Murphy, indicates Bellamy with his eyes. “You want me to throw him out?”

Is this what power feels like? Looking out over a sea of people and thinking _I’m responsible for that_? He thinks of a dozen different biting things he could say, and then swallows each of them down. _That’s not a survivor’s move_. “I don’t know yet,” he says, lazily. “What have you got left to teach us, Bellamy?”

Bellamy lets his eyes move over the crowd, considering. He’s cornered, he’s searching for an answer. He lets his eyes meet Murphy’s again. “You ever learn how to fight blindfolded?”

“What’ve you got?”

Miller’s let go of Bellamy now. Bellamy indicates the space in front of him. “You want to demonstrate for us, Murphy?” He’s got a strip of cloth in his hands now. It’s a challenge, and he feels white-hot rage in his stomach, and ---

And he laughs in Bellamy’s face.

So that’s how Bellamy joins Murphy’s fight club.

\---

The alarm goes off halfway into his patrol shift with Bryan. He drops to his knees, laces his hands behind his head, and tries to remember if there’s any contraband underneath his mattress. There’s -- shit, there’s the gun he took from Bellamy. That’s going to get him at least a month in solitary. Anything else? His only other posessions are his thermos and the shirts he’s traded for. Those are fine. He flicks his eyes up to Bryan, who is just staring at him. What is he _waiting for_? He’s gonna get wrecked. No, wait. Bryan is a guard.

“What are you doing?” asks Bryan in disbelief.

“The alarm?” says Murphy, incoherently. Does he need to get down farther? Come on, he’s been good. Well, decent.

“Yeah,” says Bryan. “We need to go, what are you _doing_?”

Wait. He’s a guard now, too. He unhooks his hands from behind his head and stands up carefully. Nobody shoots him. The alarm is still blaring. Bryan jerks his head, and then they’re both pelting down the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: [updates literally ten minutes before 3x09] #breakneck  
> update, post 3x09: i want you to know i love ontari and i have ever since watch the thrones
> 
> edit: i did a leetle editing and there will probably be two chapters left. stay tuned for the sequel as well!  
> here's the playlist for it!  
> http://8tracks.com/latitude-b/pain-penance-birthright
> 
> got questions? comments? milk? leave them at the bottom, where it says "post comment". unless it's milk. you should put that in cereal
> 
> thanks for reading!


	15. it doesn't have your initials on it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kane is sentenced. Octavia delivers. Murphy tries to steal Bellamy's shoes.

After waking up, Bellamy lays in bed, not moving for a long time. He’s not sure if he ever fell asleep, actually. He had laid down in his bunk after the verdict had passed, and kept laying there. He’s not sure, but Murphy might have attempted to take off his boots. He wiggles his toes. Murphy was unsuccessful.

Murphy is awake now, and he flips on the light. Climbing down from his bunk, he stares at Bellamy. “Come on,” he says. “We’ve both got first watch.”

“They’re going to kill Kane,” he hears himself say. His voice doesn’t sound like his own.

“Yeah, so?” says Murphy, dismissive. “He’s a traitor.”

Bellamy doesn’t reply. Murphy keeps talking as he rifles through drawers, getting dressed. “You’re going to kill Kane. You made this decision. You’re the one who decided to side with Pike. Monty? He follows Pike because he trusts _you_. Monroe followed Pike because she trusted _you_. You’re responsible for her death, for LaCroix’s death. _You_ fucked up.”

Everyone’s been saying other people are responsible for certain deaths. Not even Clarke had placed the blame on him yet. “What are you getting at, Murphy?”

“ _You’re_ the leader here. You’re the one that people follow. It’s not Pike. It’s not Kane. It’s you, and it’s Clarke.”

Bellamy doesn’t move. Murphy is at the door now, anxious on the balls of his feet. He should go. If he’s late to watch it’ll go on his record, and he’s not likely to be recommended for another permanent assignment. Murphy’s got a knee into the pit of his stomach, is reaching up towards his face, like he smothered Connor, like he killed Myles.

Bellamy reacts before he realizes it. Murphy’s against the wall, Bellamy’s forearm across his throat to keep him there. Murphy levels him with a cool gaze. “You’re up now, aren’t you? Might as well get to watch.”

Bellamy drops his arm. _Fuck you_ , he doesn’t say, because he _gets_ what Murphy did, and he’s angry that he fell for it, and he feels numb and stupid and tired. “You’re wrong, you know,” he says instead, his voice heavy. Murphy, in the training room, his voice directing the delinquents; his easy laugh with Emily; his laughter at Bellamy’s challenge. “They’d follow you, too.”

“Fuck off,” Murphy snarls, pushing away from him and stalking out into the hallway.

\---

Octavia catches him between first and second shift. “If Pike isn’t dead within the next week, I’ll kill you myself.”

Murphy is putting away his guard jacket in the top drawer. “Nice to see you too, Octavia. Oh, I’ve been terrible, how are you? I still have five months.”

Octavia’s voice is made of iron. “If Lincoln is dead before Pike is, no redemption tattoo will stop me.”

Right, Lincoln was involved with the prison riot. In the little coup that Kane had staged with Sinclair. Kane doesn’t know that there’s a coup already under his nose, and wouldn’t trust him if he did. “You got something for me, or you just coming to threaten?”

“Yeah,” she says, and when she’s going though her bag he looks at her, and thinks of the girl in the skybox, soft as silk but _sharp_. She’s lost that soft edge to her now, is all knife-cut and warrior-strength. Maybe the Grounders are good for something, after all. Well, they’re all people in the end. What should he care what happens to any of them?

He does care. Octavia is handing him a black-handled, well-made weapon: a knife. A dagger? He’s not sure and also it doesn't really matter. “Something special about this?” he asks.

“It doesn’t have your initials on it,” she says. “You have a gun?”

“Yeah,” he says, pulling out Bellamy’s gun from underneath his mattress. He hands it to her without thinking. She takes out the existing clip, drops it in her bag. She takes a clip of her own, shows it to him before putting it in the gun. She’s a little more hesitant with the gun than she was with the knife. “This has two shots worth of iocane powder in it. The rest are blank. The iocane bullets can kill, but it depends on the weight of the person and if they’re allergic, which most people are -- two should be sufficient for Pike. They’re going to hear gunshots, so I’d use this as a last resort.”

He tucks the gun into his waistband.

Lastly, she gives him a tiny vial, filled with liquid. “If you slip this into food or water, it should leave him paralyzed within seconds. It won’t kill him, though.”

He slips that one into his sleeve. “Anything else?”

“You have an exit strategy?”

”I don’t have any strategy,” he confesses. “Can you get me out?”

“No,” says Octavia. Her expression doesn’t change. “You’re on your own.”

\---

Killing Pike is the easiest thing he’s ever done. He feels like he’s watching himself do it; hears himself talking to Pike, telling him about whatever fucking petty problems he has, listens to Pike’s calculations whirring. Pike says “I think I’m coming down with whatever you have,” which is what, a sense of justice? He coughs, and, oh, haha that was a joke because Pike spent a long time yelling for help yesterday probably. Murphy stares at him until Pike says, “The glasses are in the cupboard above the sink,” and they are. Murphy pours the iocane into the water, uses the noise of the sink to cover his movements.

“Thank you,” says Pike, setting down the glass as Murphy sits on Pike’s couch. He coughs more, looks down at his papers, takes a sip or two of the water. How long does it take? Seconds, Octavia had said. But did he even drink any of the poison?

Pike slumps, then, sudden, and -- is it really that easy? It’s _really_ going to be that easy? Murphy shoves a knee into Pike’s abdomen to keep himself steady while he cuts through Pike’s throat. There’s a lot of blood. It’s all over his hands.

He should wash them off. “Murphy?” says someone behind him. How did he not hear them come in? He feels for Pike’s pulse. He’s gone.

He turns, still holding the bloody knife. It’s obvious who did this, he can’t defend himself. It's not going to be that easy. It’s Bellamy, because of course it is.

His hands are shaking too badly. He drops the knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter you've all been waiting for
> 
> also @murphy it totally matters, a dagger is a stabbing weapon and a knife is a slice-y weapon. im also very sorry about being bad at writing octavia
> 
> thanks for reading! thank you for your comments and your kudos, they mean the world to me. No, really. <3


	16. he won't survive this cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy and Murphy leave Arkadia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's your pre 3x10 consolation
> 
> <3 <3 <3 <3
> 
> stay safe, friends
> 
> content warning: dissociation

Murphy expected the world to at least come back into focus after he killed Pike, but he still feels out of it when Bellamy takes him by the elbow and pushes him onto the couch, where he sits obediently. Killing Connor wasn’t like this, wasn’t so -- _heady_ \-- it was something that needed to be done. So was this. 

Maybe it’s the blood. He’s used to being covered in his own blood, for sure, but not somebody else’s, not when it’s still so wet. He gets off the couch, shuffles to Pike’s sink. The sound of the water from the faucet is _nauseating_. Get a grip, Murphy, as soon as Bellamy gets his shit together you’re dead. He throws up everything he’s eaten today into the sink. The water filtration system can take care of it. Probably.

Bellamy’s finished doing whatever the hell he was doing. He’s behind Murphy now, and Murphy feels his shoulders tense, his hands curl into fists. His face is wet. He sucks in a huge breath. Bellamy’s hands are gentle on his upper arms, and he lets Bellamy take them, hears the _snk_ of cuffs. Tugs. Misery.

Bellamy’s saying something. It’s something important, probably, something that’s _john murphy you are being arrested for treason and murder [and look how well the words ‘murphy’ and ‘murder’ fit together, we knew you’d be perfect for this job]_. He closes his eyes. He opens them.

They’re in the corridor now. Bellamy has his elbow, is being gentle. _The only thing that matters / is not putting me in a cage._ He submitted to a cage once before, to protect Emori, to survive: but he won’t survive this cage; the new order of Arkadia under Bellamy. Bellamy seeking vengeance for Pike’s death. He takes a deep breath.

Everything comes into focus. If this doesn’t work, he’ll goad Bellamy into killing him.

\---

Murphy starts breaking down halfway to lockup. When Bellamy had found Pike, and the blood on Murphy’s hands, he had made the correct conclusion. Murphy looks _wrecked_ , though, and Bellamy doesn’t doubt there was at least another element to Pike’s death. He’s tabling that for now: now, he just has to get Murphy to lockup. Solitary, probably.

Murphy’s breathing is coming faster now, in huge, harsh gasps, and his eyes have stopped tracking anything. He’s -- crying, maybe? Does he care? _He deserves to die._ Murphy this morning, provoking him into violence to get him up. Murphy, lying on the top bunk: _I don’t know if I like Monty_. Murphy’s hands, tugging at the cuffs: he’s reminded viscerally of Clarke: _We can fix this_. Should’ve taken her up on that.

Yeah, he cares. He shoves Murphy into the wall. Using a hand on his throat to keep him still (he’s seen Murphy fighting, he knows what takes him down), Bellamy unlocks one cuff from behind Murphy, pulls his arms forward, and re-locks the cuff. Murphy’s breathing goes from hyperventilation to slower, more even, despite the hand to his throat. Bellamy starts to talk, to scold: “This isn’t how you take power,” he says. “You earn it, you don’t kill for it.” He takes his hand off Murphy’s throat. Murphy is calming now that his hands aren’t behind his back. He’s no threat. “You gonna be good now?” Murphy sniffles, meets his eyes, and then nods. _Murphy on the floor, panting around Raven’s punch: I’ll be good._

Bellamy is half-turning now, ready to start the trek down the corridor again. Murphy is a step behind him. Then: his radio, suddenly skimming the floor, bouncing away from him. He bends to pick it up, but a gun is being pressed to his temple. He can feel the chain of handcuffs against the back of his neck.

He should have searched Murphy.

\---

His hands aren’t shaking anymore. He’s got an exit plan. Bellamy is his ticket out of here.

Two iocane bullets. Guaranteed to kill. He won’t need more than two shots.

Bellamy tries to talk him down, tries to talk to him about power, tries to apologize. It’s cute. It’s not going to work. Bellamy knows a third of the whole picture, and not as well as he thinks he does.

It’s never bothered him before, but his tattoo feels like it’s burning.

He shoves Bellamy towards the main gate. Everybody stares. Nobody moves. What do you do when the the right-hand man of your chancellor is held at gunpoint by your local convict? Nothing, apparently. Let someone else deal with it.

\---

He’s not going to be able to open the gate. Whoever is manning the gate will refuse to open it, and Murphy can’t hold off two people with one gun and his hands chained, and then it will be over.

Bellamy will forgive him. He was panicking; in Murphy’s mind, it was probably the only option. Bellamy will forgive him for his crimes, but the law won’t. He’s already imagining Murphy’s execution.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Bell.

Murphy is yelling to the person in the gatehouse. It’s Harper. Harper was a part of Kane’s insurrection, who would put her on gate duty after that? Who’s in charge of that? Oh, wait. He is. _Shit._

Murphy is talking with her, pleading. Is Murphy working with Kane, or was he a free agent? Why would he kill Pike? To save Kane? To take his place as Chancellor? His own gun is discarded somewhere in Pike’s office. His radio is long gone.

The gate is opened. _“Christ,”_ says Murphy, like he hadn’t expected it to work either. He’s shoving Bellamy forward, and they’re out of camp, and Pike is dead, and the gate is closing behind them. He’s numb and angry and they’re both going to die by Grounder hands.

Murphy’s dropped the gun now, stepped away from him; Bellamy’s no use to him now that they’re outside the walls. Bellamy picks up the gun, levels it at Murphy, trying to regain some sense of balance, of power.

“Wouldn’t bother with that,” says Murphy. “It’s full of blanks.”

“The patrol on the wall,” says Bellamy. There’s a chance --

“Yeaaaah,” says Murphy, and now he’s all cockiness, self-assuredness. Was all of it -- the flinching, the panic -- was it _fake_? “You should have shut down my fight club while you had the chance.” He raises his cuffed hands. “Hey, you wanna do something about this?”

“No.”

Murphy shrugs, like it doesn’t matter to him. “Come on,” he says, heading for the trees. “We should get moving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: the return of trigedasleng translations, prosper!!, bellamy not being a jerk???
> 
> as a warning, if 3x10 is as bad as I think it will be, ch17 will be straight fluff with the main story picking up again in ch18-20. also, I'm still not sure if there will be just seventeen chapters. we're very close to the end, though.
> 
> as always, your comments continue to make my entire life. thanks for reading!


	17. you know me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa kiss a lot. Some other stuff happens too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is not straight fluff as i promised, and i feel a little bad for lying, so here's my favorite poem:
> 
> 1999  
> Kevin A. Gonzalez
> 
> We were driving to your funeral  
> & our father was not crying  
> because he has a way  
> of tying ribbons around grief.  
> It was the year we learned  
> the piercing that prefaces the blood  
> holds the most delicate of darknesses.  
> Then it was the year we opened  
> all our faucets & waited for the sea  
> to bleed to death. Then it was the year  
> we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly  
> the year we started to believe  
> every thorn was just a bridge.  
> Then the year all we talked about  
> was boxing. Then the year  
> my stomach hurt all year, & then  
> the year no one spoke of you.
> 
> If there were an antonym for suicide  
> we could all choose when to be born.  
> I would have been born after that day  
> so I could not remember you.  
> So my fingers would stop pointing  
> at all the things that aren't there.

Lexa is lying on her bed, trying to stay still while Clarke draws her. “Why do some Sky People call you Clarkegriffin?”

“Hm?” goes Clarke. “Oh, because that’s my last name.”

“Your _last_ name? Why are you only Clarke now? What did you do?”

“No -- Griffin is the name that comes _after_ mine.”

Lexa’s brow furrows adorably. “What?”

Clarke sighs. “It’s more like -- Griffin is my _family_ name. My mom is Abby Griffin, and my dad is Jake Griffin, so I’m Clarke Griffin. I took their last name because I’m their daughter, they’re my family. My mom used to be Abby Steen, but she became Abby Griffin when she married my dad. Sometimes, when you get married, you take another person’s last name, because you become part of them and theirs.”

“Oh,” says Lexa. “So you’re Clarke of the Griffin People?”

“Kind of,” says Clarke. “But I’m part of a bigger clan, I guess? The Griffins aren’t my kru, it’s just my mom and me. When I talk about ‘my people’, I mean all of them, as a whole: skaikru.”

“What do you think my last name would be?” asks Lexa.

“Griffin,” says Clarke immediately, without thinking. “Because you’re mine.”

Clarke glances up from her paper to Lexa. She’s got that smile tugging at the corners of her mouth again.

She’s done good work here today.

\---

It’s ten minutes into second shift and only about a third of their usual crowd has showed up. Harper was arrested after the incident. He knows Lindy got cut from the kitchens after, and Delaney, who has been arrested for treason. They were both patrolling on the wall when Murphy and Bellamy left. He’s split them into pairs and tried to distract them from the whole thing.

Monty doesn’t show up until midway through. “Have either of you seen Murphy?” he asks them, which, does he not know? Has he been holed up in Mecha all day? What does he even do for that long?

“Murphy held up Bellamy at gunpoint and left,” says Bryan beside him, which, way to break it to him. “Pike is dead; Murphy probably killed him, we don’t know.”

“What?” says Monty, so Bryan begins repeating himself until Monty shakes his head. “No, I just -- who’s in charge now?”

Bryan shrugs. “I don’t know. Kane, maybe. Dr. Griffin. Nobody really knows what to do.”

“We should get out of here,” Miller hears himself say. “We should get out of here while we still can.”

“What?”

“Listen,” he says. “You know Lindy and Delaney both got arrested, right? It’s only a matter of time before the Guard starts going after people who were close to both of them, while the adults fight over whatever scrap of power they can. We should go. There’s nothing for us here.”

Monty’s brow furrows. There’s his mom. She’s kind of a jerk, though. That’s unfortunate. “Where would we go?” he says.

“Dropship,” says Bryan, immediately. “We would go to the dropship.”

\---

Clarke is present for another meeting, where Grounder leaders talk about redemption, about blood must have blood, and Lexa reminds them that there’s no end to that cycle.

Clarke aches with familiarity: another time when she was in the thick of Grounders, convincing them to take on her plan, waiting on a mole to finish his task. Murphy has five months, was given six months to complete his mission. Grounder mercy won’t last that long.

But after the meeting? Lexa takes her face in her warm hands, and they kiss -- maybe for a second, for a minute, for several sunlit days --

Jus drein no jus daun. It’s easy to love Lexa and forget about Arkadia. What is right, though, is not always easy.

\---

Murphy doesn’t talk to him after that. Bellamy doesn’t know why the world hasn’t righted itself yet: Murphy is handcuffed and Bellamy’s a much better fighter, but Murphy is still striding confidently into the woods and Bellamy is still following him.

As they reach a clearing, Murphy stops suddenly, holds up a cuffed hand to keep Bellamy back. “Stop,” he whispers, and Bellamy, disquieted by Murphy’s voice, stops. Then Murphy directs his voice to the void: “Ai laik Mofi kom Skaikru. You know me.”

 _What._ Bellamy startles into action, finally; takes Murphy by the shoulders and shoves both of them into the bracken,into the trees. Murphy yells in surprise. “What are you _doing,_ ” hisses Bellamy. “They’re going to hear us.”

“Like they haven’t already heard us coming through the forest,” Murphy snarls back, struggling underneath his hands. “Let me go, what are _you_ doing?”

“The Grounders know you? Yeah, they _know you_ , and they’re going to torture you again - they’re going to torture both of us. At least in Arkadia it’ll be a quick death.”

“Yeah? You would _allow_ me a quick death?” Bellamy’s hand is across Murphy’s shoulders, keeping him pressed to his chest.

The Exodus Charter would not. Bellamy will. “Yes,” he says. “Murphy -- Turn around and come back with me. There’s nothing in these woods for you. The Grounders _tortured_ you - they won’t ever show you mercy, that’s not who they are - hey!”

Murphy’s hooked his foot around Bellamy’s ankle, is trying to overbalance him. “That’s cute,” he’s rattling out. “That’s real cute, Bellamy, thinking you _know_ me, thinking you know every _thing_ about every _one_ \--” He’s not successful, though Bellamy _oofs_ around the elbows to his gut. Bellamy refuses to yield, and eventually Murphy either tires himself out or realizes it’s pointless. “Fine, whatever -- we can go back to Arkadia. I’m -- _sorry_.” He stumbles over the last world. “Just let me go.”

“Yeah?” asks Bellamy, thinking of Pike’s blood all over his hands. He’s not sure if he feels grief, or respite over his death. He’s not sure how he feels about the man under his hands, either: the Murphy he knows from the past month; the Murphy who hung him; the Murphy who saved his life at the canyon.

Murphy sniffles. “ _Yeah,_ ” he says, and then: “Jesus, Bellamy, I _get_ it, okay. I’m handcuffed in the woods, I’m either going to die from tripping over something or I’m going to be captured by Grounders again, who will probably be really disappointed that I am still alive. I’m coming in easy, yeah? I just need you to let go of me before I -- fuck up.”

Bellamy releases him. Murphy stumbles a couple paces forward, out of the cover of the trees, leans over, breathing hard. Then he’s yelling again: “Ai laik Mofi kom Skaikru. You know me! Chancellor Pike is dead. Long live Wanheda.”

Bellamy’s whole world rearranges itself, but none of the pieces seem to fit. _He’s going to kill Murphy if the Grounders don’t get to them both first --_

A Grounder emerges from a tree, catches Murphy by the shoulder. “Heyo, _lukotwar_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -i literally cannot believe that bellamy fell for the same trick twice  
> -i've been planning the first scene since ch3 (when Lexa calls Finn "finncollins" because she doesn't really get last names vs. first names)  
> -why didn't Prosper reveal himself earlier? the answer to this is: are you sure that's Prosper?  
> -when Murphy says "before I -- fuck up", he means "have a panic attack"
> 
> there won't be a chapter for sure next Thursday/Wednesday because I will be at a Mountain Goats concert! 
> 
> as always: your comments, and kudos mean the world to me. they're the reason I'm still writing this, and the reason it updates at its standard breakneck speed. thank you. and thanks for reading!


	18. didn't mean to hurt him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprise encounter. A cart! Bellamy translates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you: you said no wednesday updates this week  
> me: that sure was a thing i said

 

Murphy lets himself smile. “Heyo, Moss,” he says.

Moss doesn’t smile back. He jerks his head at Bellamy. “Chon emo hef?”

Of course Moss doesn’t speak any more English than he did a month ago. Murphy guesses. “That’s Bellamy,” he says. “He’s having a bad day.”

Moss nods, and then removes a knife from his belt. Murphy thinks about Bellamy, dead in the forest where nobody will think to look for his body, cut from the throat to gut, blood all over -- Stop. Just stop.

“Don’t,” he says. “I want -- Clarke will want him alive.”

Bellamy’s caught up to them now. Murphy feels awkward, like he should introduce them to each other. Moss looks Bellamy up and down, _glares_ at him, and picks up the chain between Murphy’s hands. “Em don sad klin,” he tells Murphy angrily.

Murphy doesn’t know what that is. “It’s fine,” he tells Moss.

Moss tugs the chain again. Murphy lets out a little noise of pain. Moss drops the chain, like it’s burned him. “Teik ai frag em op en dison laik odon,” he says. Well. That was definitely a long sentence.

“I don’t know what you want, I can’t --”

“Lukotwar, ai ste daun teik ai frag em op,” says Moss, his voice blurring into urgency.

“He’s asking you for permission to kill me,” says Bellamy, his voice taut.

“Moss,” Murphy says, his voice despairing. “I don’t want that, okay? I already have enough blood on my hands, yeah?”

“Noble of you,” Bellamy says next to him in an undertone, which, _fuck you Bellamy._

Wait. Bellamy can speak Grounder -- he must have learned at least a little from Octavia. “Can you translate?” he asks.

“You made a deal with Grounders and you can’t even speak Trigedasleng?”

“Hey, I’m trying to save your life here.” He says it without thinking, like they’re just talking, like they’re friends, like he isn’t handcuffed in the woods. “Can you translate or not?”

“Uhhhhhh,” says Bellamy. “Sure.”

“Can you say, um,” Now that he actually has an opportunity for Moss to understand him, he can’t think of words. Even so, this Moss is different: he is not dissimilar to the Moss who held his hand and gave him sweet things, but different none the less. “Just tell him that Pike is dead and you’re my firsthand witness. That Clarke will want you alive. Ask him if Prosper’s around.”

While Bellamy stumbles through the foreign language, Murphy notices the similarities between Prosper and Moss -- they’re both lanky, but Moss is filled out where Prosper has lean muscle. Like Bellamy and Octavia, they’re both half-like each other. Murphy kind of wishes he had a sibling, to compare himself to, against.

He’s caught out of his thoughts when Moss gets the chain between his hands again, yanks upwards on it, yelling at Bellamy.

Pain. Wrapping his wrists, Jackson had told him in a wry voice: _don’t get handcuffed again_. Now he’s yelling at Moss, is he gonna have to fight Moss? and Bellamy is shouting, and it’s all noise: Moss is _flinching_ and Bellamy has him by the shoulders -- _steady steady steady_ \-- and he -- Moss is gone. “Where --?”

“Hey,” says Bellamy. “You good?”

“No,” says Murphy, and wrenches himself against Bellamy’s hold. Doesn’t work. Forces himself into stillness. “Where’s Moss. Let me out of these cuffs, fuck you --” He doesn’t want Bellamy to let him go. He wants to stay anchored, right here, in this spot.

“Moss? -- went to find Prosper, yeah? Said something about a cart. I -- the key to your cuffs is somewhere back at camp.” A twitch of his mouth. “We can go back and get it if you want.”

“Shut up,” says Murphy. He needs to get a grip. He’s already lost it once today, he’s sickened by it. He’s going to need all his brains for what’s to come. Then, almost without his permission, he adds: “Sorry.”

He needs to keep Bellamy as an ally.

“You good?” Bellamy asks again.

“Don’t --” he says, and feels his knees loosening. He slumps forward into Bellamy, who catches him in surprise.

 _Ah, and there’s the cart_ , he thinks, just as he surrenders to unconsciousness.

\---

With Murphy unconscious in his arms, he’s left with no allies. Moss was definitely ready to kill him for jack shit, and who knows who this guy is or what he wants. He has a cart, though, so at least Bellamy won’t be carrying Murphy through fifteen miles of woods. “Heyo,” says the man. “You’re... Belomi?”

“Yeah,” he says. “He passed out, can I put him in the cart?”

“Is Chancellor Pike dead?”

Pike’s wide, blank eyes. The absence of grief. Shock, maybe. “Yeah,” he says. “Murphy killed him.”

“Good,” says the man. “You can set him in the cart. Start working on the cuffs - there’s tools in the wooden case.”

Murphy’s barely seven stones worth of weight in his arms, but he’s glad to set him in the cart anyway. He finds the lockpick set easily.

Murphy’s not out for long. He jerks into wakefulness as soon as Bellamy touches him; his eyes don’t focus until they meet Bellamy. “You gonna cuff me?” he asks.

“No,” Bellamy says, and then, concerned: “You know where you are?”

Murphy groans. “Kind of,” he says. “Is Moss okay? Did Prosper actually get here or did you just climb into any old cart?”

“I’m right here, _lukotwar_ ,” says the man, checking his head into the cart. “My brother is fine, just spooked. He’ll get over it.”

Murphy struggles into a better sitting position. “Didn’t mean to hurt him,” he says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Prosper(?) tells him, then looks to Bellamy. “We’re riding into Polis, can you handle him?”

Maybe. “Yeah,” he says. “You know what’ll happen to me once we get to Polis?”

Prosper shrugs. “Since _lukotwar_ doesn’t want us to kill you, it’ll be left up to _wanheda_.” He hops out. The cart is moving, turning around now. He hears the whinny of horses, large bodies shifting.

“ _Wanheda_ is Clarke,” Murphy explains to Bellamy. “She has a soft spot for you, don’t worry about it.”

Bellamy has found a canteen tucked between the furs. He hands it to Murphy. “I’m worried,” he says.

He doesn’t think Murphy’s ever been _handled_ in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just kind of a filler chapter until we get to Polis, sorry
> 
> chon emo hef - who are you/who is he  
> em don sad klin - he made his choice  
> teik al frag em op en dison laik odon - let me kill him and get this over with  
> lukotwar, ai ste daun teik ai frag em op - spy, let me kill him
> 
> also, 'hai' is technically trigedasleng for 'hello', but 'heyo' is a more casual greeting, I think
> 
> as always: thank you for reading. thank you for commenting. thank you for kudosing. come talk to me on [tumblr](icetastrophe.tumblr.com) if you want! <3 <3


	19. static

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven fights Alie. Murphy and Bellamy arrive in Polis. Miller + co discuss what to do next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a mostly murphy-free chapter that ties up 75% of our loose ends, and Jasper finally gets added to the tag list!
> 
> also, Alie's thought-speak is borrowed from Animorphs, of course

Words, words, words. She clutters her mind with them, plays the loudest music she can.

_< I don’t understand what you hope to accomplish.>_

Wow, Alie, shut up. Get a brain, and get out of mine. Repeats the Engineer’s Prayer over and over, pulls herself up over and over again, exhaustion/sweat/pain. Anything. Any sensory stimulation she can wrap her bare skin around.

_< Sensory overload can’t lock me out. I am in you now.>_

Creepy as fuck, Alie, and also go fuck yourself. She tries not to think of Alie, even though she’s _right there_ , tries to -- haha, right! The switch here should go there and -- the music hikes up into even louder pitches. The screen flips on, it’s all static. Sensory overload? Make everything static. Make Alie disappear into static.

Alie flickers, and she’s gone.

Nice.

Keep it up, Raven, you’ve got everything at stake.

\---

_< Sensory stimulation at the level required to keep me out is untenable.>_

Don’t look at her. Don’t talk to her. She’s not there. Static. Static. Static.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Jasper. She turns off the music. She’s always polite to her guests. Dr. Griffin is with him.

That’s more variables than she’s prepared to deal with. Stop. Don’t _think_ about it, Raven, just do it. “I need to get this -- _this thing_ \-- out of my head, and I think I need your help to do it.” Dr. Griffin stares at her -- yeah yeah yeah, Abby, you told me so, she gets it already -- but Abby nods and Jasper’s always on her side now, and that’s all she needs. “You sent the 100 to the ground wearing wristbands -- they were designed to transmit vital signs, electromagnetic impulses.” She can see Alie out of the corner of her eyes. She fills her vision with static.

“I designed them, I know how they work.” God, Abby Griffin, you’re so supercilious, aren’t you? So arrogant. You just know everything, don’t you? She tamps that down as best she can. Resentment isn’t going to get her anywhere.

“Then you’ll know what we have to do to reverse it -- and then we can send the energy pulse into me, into my brain. If I’m right, it’ll fry out whatever Alie put into my brain without damaging the tissue.”

Jasper’s skeptical. He’s so concerned, the poor boy. “If you’re wrong --”

If you’re wrong you’d rather be dead. That’s fine.

_< Why, Raven? Why, with everything I can do for you?>_

Don’t respond. Don’t do it. She’s static, you’re static, you’re static in your brain your heart your mind.

_< Why would you do this?>_

She is unwound. “Because you stole my memories, you crazy bitch!”

Jasper’s stepping forward, through her temper tantrum. He steps right into Alie. Nice. Alie flickers, reappears closer to her. “Where are the wristbands now?” he’s asking. Get her back on track. Nice nice nice.

“I don’t know.”

“I do,” says Abby Griffin. Maybe she’s good for something after all.

“No,” Raven is saying, they can’t tell her, Alie’s gonna hear it -- “Everything I hear, she hears, everything I see, she sees -- just, just. Tell him.” They step away from her. Abby leans in real close to Jasper’s ear, whispers, sibilant/hushed.

Think of waves on the shore of an ocean she’s only seen from space. Think of the whir of the shop up on the Ark, the shhhh of space, think of static, Raven, just think of static. Jasper’s got his hand on her shoulder. “We’re gonna fix you, alright?”

She almost smiles. He’s gone.

_< Tell him to stay.>_  
_< Tell him you changed your mind.>_

Don’t. Don’t.

_< Then I’m sorry for this.>_

She gives a little nod, and Raven’s suddenly on her knees. Images flash in front of her eyes: bone marrow taken from her body, blood bubbling up from her surgery without anesthesia.

_< You wanted your memories back. Here they are.>_

They’re her memories, but -- they’re still her _memories._ She lived through it once before. It’s not that it’s -- painful, exactly, because she knows her synapses are firing like they did then, but she still knows it’s not _now_ , can file that away to work through it.

 _Finn_. And that’s so much easier. Finn laughing, Finn getting arrested for spacewalking, Finn dying at Clarke’s hands. And -- Like Alie thinks she hasn’t turned these memories over and over in her mind, hasn’t become numb to them. And she never even saw Finn get arrested, and she knows this: memories are false constructs. Humans are just electricity and nerves and synapses and falsities. There’s no soul in a machine. She hears herself laughing. It’s all static.

Monty’s at her door. Jasper left it open. “Hey,” he says, even though she’s clearly having a hard time. “We need to get out of here.”

That’s actually kind of a good idea.

\---

They’re hiding out in a cave Octavia led them to. Lincoln made a fire and then left almost immediately, Octavia with him: they’re leading the remaining Grounders left in camp to safety. Miller’s got his hand wrapped in Bryan’s: it’s the only solid thing he’s been sure of today. “We should run two patrols around the clock.”

Kane nods. “Pike’s out,” he says. “The blockade should be lifted by now. We become the 13th clan again. Those were the terms.”

Bryan scoffs beside him. “They’re Grounders. You really think they’re going to play by the rules?”

There’s a scream from around the corner; it’s Raven. Miller winces, but assumes Sinclair’s got it covered. It’s a good bet, because Sinclair emerges a couple minutes later, Jasper closely behind him.

“We should get away from here,” Jasper says. After a few beats, he adds: “Raven’s fine.”

“We should go to Polis,” says Kane. “Talk to the Commander, to Clarke.”

”Yeah,” says Miller. “If we weren’t surrounded by like, a _thousand_ Grounders.”

Octavia lifts herself from the shadows of the cave. Miller hadn’t even realized she’d returned. “Blockade’s gone,” she says. “We’re home free.”

\---

Murphy spikes into a fever as soon as the cart begins to move. Bellamy can’t do anything about it except press a cool cloth to his forehead and keep pressing water to his lips. He’s keenly aware that if Murphy dies on the way to Polis, he’s as good as dead. Which isn’t necessarily untrue anyway.

But he doesn’t think Murphy is on his way to death. He’s wrecked, for sure, brought on by exerting himself too much on too little energy, coupled with dehydration and stress, but he’s nowhere close to death.

He doesn’t manage to unlock the cuffs before they get to Polis. He’s afraid of damaging Murphy worse, and every time he gets close enough to work on the lock, Murphy’ll start to emit whimpers, and guilt stills his hand and closes up his throat.

Once the cart stops, and Prosper gets out, he makes short work of the cuffs. He doesn’t blame Bellamy, or talk to him. Bellamy sits on the edge of the cart and watches as Prosper directs other Grounders to carry Murphy out on a stretcher.

Bellamy feels like his heart has hollowed out. He’s in the midst of the enemy camp, and he’s going to get what’s coming to him. He doesn’t struggle against their hold when they lead him down several flights of stairs. He blanches a little when they push him into a cage, but he lets them.

He lets it happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrappin' up loose ends before ch20, and ch20 which I absolutely cannot wait to write. and then an as-of-yet unnamed sequel. in the meantime, there's "in disappearing ink", the "murphy gets transported to a Modern AU" you didn't know you wanted, and a fantasy/modern/college AU in the works as well. things are lookin' up for mofi kom skaikru!
> 
> as always: your comments and kudos mean the world to me. thanks for reading!!


	20. people like you don’t have breaking points.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy is generally unimpressed by baths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: there will only be 20 chapters  
> me: chapter 20 is the length of like three chapters
> 
> content warning for referenced/implied torture

The story he’s told himself about being tortured by the Grounders is not what happened. In Arkadia, he had thought about it, often, in case he was ever asked: I was tortured for two, maybe three weeks, time is hard. They poisoned me and whipped me and cut me just so I would scream, and some of it wasn’t even to get information. I am traumatized. I am weak. I am no threat, except against the Grounders, my only enemies, the only people I desire revenge against.

But it’s not true. Titus tortured him for maybe five days in total. Trikru, for about three. Only a little over a week of captivity. It could have been worse. It should have been worse, if Clarke hadn’t decided he was more useful somewhere else. He is lucky, so, so lucky that Clarke decided to show him mercy, that the Commanders decided he could be useful. That they didn’t notice he was a flinching screwed-up mess. He knows he’s weak. He knows it could have been so much worse. He knows he’s lucky to be alive, that he should be grateful. And he is grateful.

It’s just that. When he wakes up in Polis, he immediately moves his leg so that the chain won’t catch. He wishes he was waking up on the boat with Emori, or in the cave with her, or even in his top bunk in Arkadia, listening to Bellamy breathe underneath him. There’s no cuff around his ankle, though, and when he stirs, the person sitting beside his bed wakes, calls for Clarke. Clarke is there, taking the seat beside his bed. He feels kind of achy and too warm. He kicks off the blanket and sits up all the way.

“Can I touch you?” Clarke asks, and she’s so hesitant about it that he nods. Her palm reaches his forehead, fingers brushing aside his sweat-damp hair. “I think your fever’s finally broken,” she tells him.

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

Clarke looks relieved. He tries to mirror her expression, since that seems appropriate. He has no idea what to do now. “I killed Pike,” he tells her.

“I know,” she says. “And you brought back Bellamy.”

 _Shit._ “I didn’t hurt him,” he says. “He was just - the only way out.”

Her hand is against her shoulders, pushing him back, against the pillow. Pillows? Wow, he must have been really down. God, he hates being sick. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “You need to drink water and get some more rest.”

“How long was I --”

“About sixteen hours. It was just a stress burn: once you get out of hell, your body throws itself right back in.” She gives a little shrug. “It happens. It’s really nothing to worry about.”

He isn’t sure he would classify Arkadia as _hell_.

\---

Clarke tells him to rest and leaves a jar filled with water by his bedside. Irrationally, he misses his thermos. Wow, get over yourself, Murphy. It wasn’t even your thermos. He drinks half the water. He’s not going to rest.

He opens the door of his room. There’s a guard waiting to the side. _Shit_. He’s about to go back inside and consider climbing out the window, when the guard says, “Anything I can do for you, _lukotwar_?”

The word sounds wrong coming from her mouth. “I’m just going out for a bit,” he says.

“Would you like an escort?” she asks.

“No thank you,” he says, and then steals away down the hallway. She doesn’t follow him.

He wanders.

He finds the kitchens. Someone there gives him a sentence that ends in _lukotwar_ and presses a warm meat pie(?) into his hands. Is this what power feels like? It’s tasty, but he thinks he prefers the safety of anonymity.

His feet lead him upstairs again, and then, by chance maybe, to the room he was kept in before. It’s the same. He opens the chest at the end of his bed. It’s full of heavy winter quilts. He guesses that the room is used for storage; sometimes it holds spies from Skaikru, sometimes it holds back the cold of winter. The bed is still fitted with the ankle cuff. He sits on the bed and fiddles with the chain. He thinks a lot about how his life has changed since he wore it, and also, how little.

The door to the room opens. It’s the Commander. “Hai, _lukotwar_ ,” she says.

Does he kneel? Does he bow? He’s already sitting down. He doesn’t do anything.

She sits down on the chair still across from his bed. “You know,” she says. “They say that people like you don’t have breaking points.”

He bristles. “Is that a threat, Commander?” he asks, because he has _no idea_ where he stands with her; definitely not enough to trust her.

Her eyes catch his: _steady steady steady_. “No,” she says, and then repeats herself. “They say that people like you don’t have breaking points, but flashpoints instead.”

He breaks from her gaze; looks down at his hands. “I don’t know what that means,” he says honestly.

She doesn’t clarify. “Skaikru representatives arrived earlier today,” she says. “Tonight we will hold a feast in your honor, to celebrate the alliance between our peoples. There will be weeks of peace meetings after this. Your presence will be -- required -- at some of them.”

He has no idea what he is to the Grounders now, to the Commander. He’s a one-trick pony; he has nothing more to offer them. He doesn’t want to risk whatever it is by asking.

She inclines her head a little, almost a nod but not quite. She reaches across the space between them and takes his wrist; her thumb against his pulse, fingers splayed against the back of his hand. He hisses at the contact, but doesn’t pull away. “ _Mochof,_ ” she says. “ _Breja, lukotwar_.”

She knows he can’t understand her. He tugs his hand away: she doesn’t immediately let go and he struggles with her for one, two beats. Only when he gasps out “ _No_ \--” does she release him. He’s trapped here again, and he could have avoided it, he didn’t have to come back here --

“You should wander back to your room within the hour,” says the Commander.

“Don’t _touch_ me,” he says, and his voice is all ragged. _I don’t have to answer to you. I don’t have to **answer** to anybody._ She let you go. Chill out, Murphy.

She’s gone the next time he looks up from his hands. He takes her advice.

\---

There are three girls in his room when he returns to it. One of them is rough, one of them is soft, and one of them _won’t stop talking_. They lead him to a side room, filled with flashy fabrics and a full-length mirror. He glances at himself in the mirror. He looks -- Well, it could be worse. They compare outfits to each other, to him; they laugh to each other, speaking quickly in the Grounder language. They fill the tub with warm water. He’s unused to watching other people work and not being expected to help, but they shoo him away, so he sits and watches them pour liquids into the tub, giving it a strange steamy quality. It smells like -- He has no idea what it smells like. Sweet, maybe. Like a flower. The water is bubbling, foaming over.

They all leave at the same time. He’s guessing the bath is for him. He makes sure the door is closed. Checks once, twice. He undresses. Stares at himself in the full-length mirror. Is generally disgusted. Considers the bath. He really doesn’t understand the appeal. He dips an elbow into the water. It’s too hot.

In exile, in the forest, he had found a creek where he would wash himself and his single set of clothes. It was not so bad, being a pariah; he knows he romanticizes it to himself, now, he still remembers starving and the bitterness and the loneliness. But what came next was worse, so he _will_ romanticize it. It’s what came next that has him pausing, here: when the Grounders found him, he was washing in that creek. They didn’t take him by surprise so much as they held him under until he had nothing in his lungs but water, and he woke up with his hands chained and a voice cut out of salt.

So. You know. He tries to avoid being in bodies of water. Superstition, and all that.

He examines the clothes they left for him: a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of dark blue pants that cling to his legs -- and his jacket. His jacket!! Clarke didn’t throw it out!! It’s been with him since he left the City of Light, and it’s the best jacket he’s ever accidentally owned. They’ve even given him a pair of socks, and left him his boots. They’re nice boots. He puts everything on. He examines himself in the mirror again. Being _lukotwar_ has never looked this good before.

The girls come back in. They talk to each other, to him. One of them ruffles his hair. It’s still dry. It’s obvious he didn’t get in the water. They scold? him, gesture impatiently, and he sits on the chair with his arms crossed. He kind of wishes they would at least send a translator. The soft one opens the door to the hallway and calls out. What is she --

Prosper appears in the doorway. Murphy feels a rush of fear go straight to his stomach. To the girls, he barks “ _Teik wogeda-de klir._ ” They chatter excitedly to each other as they leave.

There are two kinds of authority, as far as Murphy cares. There’s the type of authority that doesn’t matter, the kind of authority that people lean on when they can’t get their way otherwise, like Pike does, like Bellamy. Then there’s the type of authority that’s leadership, the kind that comes from respect, like Clarke, like what he supposes the Commander has with the Grounders. There’s the authority of someone who will hurt him if he doesn’t comply, and there’s the authority of someone who has earned it; a kind of trust, a submission he does not mind so much.

He doesn’t know which kind of authority Prosper wields.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mochof, breja lukotwar - thank you. mercy/forgive me, spy  
> Teik wogeda-de klir. - clear the room
> 
> since I average about three scenes per chapter, I decided to end it here so that I could have three more scenes to finish out the next chapter. sorry! also, check out how Incredibly AU this fic is on the horizon of 3x13. 
> 
> as always: your comments and kudos are the sole reasons I am still writing this and it is not abandoned somewhere by ch11. thank you for them, and thanks for reading! <3


	21. and that is no bad thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy takes a bath and goes to prom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for brief suicidal ideation! it's at the very end.

He has better things to do than force skaiskats to take baths, but he promised Mira and the girls that he would be there if he was needed, and, well, he doesn’t break promises. As they leave, he hears one girl say “ _Ai sen lukotwar yuj. Ai sen em hon eidon pakstoka._ ” The other girl laughs and replies: “ _No. Em es feisbona kwelness._ ” Honestly, she’s kind of right.

Lukotwar is sitting, his arms crossed across his chest. “You’re filthy,” Prosper tells him. “You need to take a bath.”

“Make me,” snarls lukotwar back, and. And.

That’s what he’s here for, isn’t it?

He dips a finger into the bathwater. It’s still a pleasant temperature, but it won’t be for long. He drops both hands into the water, cupping them until they fill. He launches the water across lukotwar: it lands partially on his face, his collar. He flinches. Prosper does it again. Lukotwar is standing up now, pulling the space between them smaller. He doesn’t splash Prosper back: instead, he shoves him, hard, pressure across his shoulders.

Prosper takes a step, considers lukotwar in full. He dips a cloth into the warmish water, gets him across the shoulders and presses it to his face, like he would have done to Moss, eons ago, wiping away the myriad of sweat and blood caked there. Lukotwar goes still. Prosper pauses, checks his skin. He’s trembling. Prosper drops the cloth back to the side of the tub. “ _I have spent - so much time - in a cage,_ ” he repeats, and lukotwar just blinks at him. “This is no cage, lukotwar,” but he doesn’t respond.

He sighs, and adjusts his view. He picks Mofi up like he would a younger Moss, except Moss usually struggles and Mofi just takes it. He’s no fisa, but he knows a little about how sometimes warriors come back and they’re not - the same. Mofi’s not a warrior, and nobody should expect him to deal with his problems like one.

Moss isn’t a warrior either, but. He’s trying. He’s trying.

He takes Mofi down the stairs, across the courtyard, to the barracks where he and Moss live. It’s a breach of - something, and he wouldn’t do it if Mofi were just a lukotwar. In Oshokru, he’s unusually violent, angry; here, they call him soft. No person is just one thing.

Mofi doesn’t really respond until Prosper sets him on the low sofa in his own apartment. Then he cuts his eyes upward towards Prosper. Prosper sits down.

Nobody but he and Moss have ever occupied this space. That’s not true. Once, the Commander came, to see if this was an arrangement she could tolerate, her only representative from Oshokru living with her strange duck Oshokru natblida. She had sat on that sofa, delicately sipping tea while Moss chattered to his mentor excitedly. That’s really when Prosper started to adjust to Polis, to the land beyond the sea: when the Commander listened to Moss’ childish stories with a smile, asking questions; when she left, she thanked Prosper for the visit. He tells this story to Mofi in a low voice and hopes his Modern English is okay.

“Okay,” says Mofi. “But why am _I_ here?”

Right. “There’s a shower,” he says. “Through here. You’re filthy, and you won’t take a bath. It seemed like the best option.”

Mofi nods. “Okay,” he says, and then, after a long beat. “Thanks.”

\---

After the water stops running, Prosper pokes his head past the closed door. “Here,” he says. “If you want to shave.”

Mofi turns.

Prosper allows himself a moment.

Mofi is -- a half-measure of a man. Not quite grown, but scarred too well yet. The tattoo of redemption on his ankle is stark against his otherwise white skin; his bones are sharp against his flesh. His torso is bruised; his throat has thumbprints struck into his complexion. His wrists are the worst of it; cut to edges, jagged patterns of pain. It’s what sets him apart from a warrior. And that is no bad thing.

Mofi meets his eyes. “Thanks,” he says, taking the blade.

He lets himself back out.

\---

Murphy emerges from the washroom back into Prosper’s living room. There’s a book on the table that wasn’t there before. He’s -- Well, they don’t call him _spy_ for no reason, so he flips open the book to find that it’s an album. An album of photographs.

There’s the sunset over the ocean. There’s a row of houses, braced against a coming storm. There’s pictures of people he doesn’t know, laughing or shoving away from the camera. There’s a man -- Prosper! -- drinking from a shell. Next, a close-up of Moss’s face, all teeth. A city, a man, his brother, and the ocean. It’s a simple story. He likes it.

Prosper is next to him. Murphy starts, but all he does is say, “Moss took them.”

He asks the obvious question. “Do you miss it?”

Prosper gives a smile that’s more sad than anything. “More than anything. When the Commander dies and Moss fails to take her place, we’ll go home.”

Most of the time, Prosper feels alien and wrong to him, like most of the Grounders do, like the whole of Polis does. But this -- this, he can understand; wanting to go home. And here -- not to the dropship, not to the Ark, but to Emori, to the cave, and, okay, kind of to the bunk above Bellamy’s, exhausted from fighting, laughs shared between them, his body sore but knowing it was worth it.  
  
“Thanks,” says Murphy instead. “For everything.”

Prosper shrugs. “It’s no problem, Mofi.”

There’s not really a home for him to go back to.

\---

When Clarke asked them if anyone would escort Murphy to the feast, Kane volunteered because of course he did, Kane with his wild-eyed idealism and his extremely fluffy beard. But Clarke shifted her eyes to Raven, and now Raven is getting out of the elevator and knock-knock-knocking on Murphy’s door in a dress borrowed from Clarke.

The last time she saw Murphy, she had just asked Jasper to recreate her life for her, and she sucker-punched him straight on in the comfort of his own room. She considers them even now.

The door is opened from the inside, by a tall Grounder. “Yu chich op?” he asks.

“Sorry,” she says, feeling unreasonably nervous, awkward in her borrowed clothes. “I’m looking for Mofi kom Skaikru?” She hopes she got that right.

He nods, and opens the door farther. Murphy is sitting in a chair having his hair brushed by a Grounder girl. He looks simultaneously pissed off and uncomfortable. When he sees her, he gets up, heedless of the girl behind him, and crosses to her. “Hey,” he says, like it’s no big thing. “I thought you were in the City of Light or whatever?”

“Yeah. That was fun for a while, but I left. I heard you were a spy for the Grounders this whole time?”

“Naw,” he says, easy. “Just for Clarke.”

Raven considers cross-examining him, comparing information to information, but then she remembers what she’s holding. “Monty said this was important to you?” Offers him the metal cylinder.

“Aw, you shouldn’t have,” he says, and takes the thermos, but she knows his white-knuckle grip, the way he tucks it into his jacket pocket. Sometimes there’s still static at the edges of her vision; fuzzy dots, white noise.

“I’m your date to prom,” she tells him. “Are you ready?”

He glances at the lanky man and gives a quick nod. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” he says.

\---

The feast is held in a long, low room. There’s -- It’s a lot of people. Raven takes him by the hand and leads him to a circular table where Kane, Miller, and Clarke are already sitting. Clarke gets up and makes shooing motions, Raven’s hand disconnects and he finds himself sittting on a chair in the middle of the room, on a raised dais. The same low table is there. The Commander says a bunch of things to him in Grounder, and then Clarke replies, and maybe they’re doing a thing that involves peace, because they’re propping his ankle up, and there’s the strong smell of disinfecting agent and the prick of a needle. Ow. You’d think they’d warn him.

Beside him, Raven, Miller, and Kane are gathering around a bowl full of water. The Commander says ????? and Kane says ???? back, and the Commander is reaching over and cutting each of them around the wrists. Their blood drips into the bowl of water, mixes. Clarke is at his side, and she’s got his arm, holding it out -- His wrists are too fucked up to get a knife underneath them. They can’t -- He struggles. Clarke lets him go. The Grounder at his ankle finishes doing Whatever and leaves. He examines his ankle. It looks neat.

Kane. “Mr. Murphy,” he says, which. Which. He takes a deep breath.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he tells Kane in a low tone.

“You need to kneel for Clarke and the Commander,” says Kane, which! Whatever! Okay! It’s surreal and weird and he can’t understand anything being said to him, but okay.

He slides from the chair onto his knees, and someone else in the room starts playing an instrument, maybe a piano, and apparently that’s enough blood because the Commander wraps each of their wrists in cloth and they go to sit at the Skaikru table. Clarke’s hand on his shoulder keeps him on his knees. When the instrument finishes playing, the Commander dips her hand into the blood/water mix and spreads it across Clarke’s face. Clarke does the same thing to the Commander. Then she pushes back the hair from his forehead -- _nice flinching, is that really what they expect of the Great Lukotwar_ \-- and spreads the blood mixture across his face.

“Jus drein no jus daun,” she tells him. Okay, that’s great, Clarke. She shoves him a little, so he gets up and crosses to sit with the rest of Skaikru. And then food is served.

Grounders are fucking weird.

-.-

He can’t eat most of the food. He picks through it: strange vegetables, that’s fine, but the panther meat just brings up bile in his throat, so he eats around it and then takes someone else’s apple. Everything is noise, all around him; people are trying to talk to him, against him: he keeps his head down. Laughter/voices/lights. He lets himself out.

He goes downstairs. Surprise, there’s an actual dungeon in Polis, not just the weird church-dungeon Titus kept him in. God. He can’t believe he’s back here. He can’t believe he’s kneeling across from Bellamy, caged and hunching. The apple fits nicely between the bars of the cage. Bellamy’s eyes, wide and white into the dark. Bellamy holds onto the apple, bites into it. He’s not talking. That’s probably for the best.

He wants his thermos. He wants his white-knuckle grip back, the surety of its cylinger, the unscrewing of its top, the metal against metal. But he left it somewhere in the dining hall, so all he has left is his hands and the blood dripping down his face. He wipes it off. It’s gross.

He’s talking. It’s like blood flowing out of his mouth. It tastes like copper. “They kept me in a cage like that, you know.” Like Bellamy’s even listening. “The cage wasn’t what was bad. It was what happened when they took me out of it.” Everything feels kind of numb, out-of-focus. Not this again. “I just. I lost everything I cared about. I got arrested in the forest, and I lost Emori. Clarke gave me a job to do, and I did it, and now I’ve outlived my usefulness. I killed Pike, so now everyone in Arkadia hates me.” Is this a flashpoint? Is this just going to keep happening? “I’m not useful anymore. I should just kill myself, I’ve got nothing left.” Breathing is hard. The stone hurts against his knees.

Bellamy’s watching him. He swallows. “You’ve still got me,” he says.

Yeah. He does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> endnotes  
> skaiskats - sky(kids)  
> ai sen lukotwar yuj. ai sen em hon eidon pakstoka. - I heard lukotwar was shredded. I heard he has an eight-pack.  
> no. em es feisbona kwelness. - No. He's a punk bitch.  
> fisa - healer
> 
> i want you to know i seriously considered writing Prosper's POV entirely in Trigedasleng. the reason that prosper has photographs of oshokru is because polaroid cameras. 
> 
> housekeeping! I'll be deleting "i'll be good deleted scenes" soon, so, read that if you're interested in it. 
> 
> on the horizon: the direct-to-DVD sequel to I'll Be Good, "You Know I'm No Good", and the theatrical release sequel, "pain, penance, birthright". 
> 
> wow! so this is Done, Finally. thank you for reading. thank you for commenting. thank you for enjoying this story!
> 
> you're welcome to also come talk to me on
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](icetastrophe.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> !


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